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THE  PLACE  OF  CHRIST  IN 
MODERN  THEOLOGY 


THE  PLACE  OF  CHRIST 


MODERN  THEOLOGY 

ir.E  Lir^APY  fF  THE 
f/(AK  %%  1S34 

UNlVFRSliY  OF  ILLINOIS 


BY 

A.  M.  FAIRBAIRN,  M.A.,  D.D. 

PRINCIPAL  OF  MANSFIELD  COLLEGE,  OXFORD;  GIFFORD  LECTURER  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  ABERDEEN;  LATE  MORSE  LECTURER  IN  UNION  SEMINARY,  NEW  YORK; 

AND  LYMAN  BEECHER  LECTURER  IN  YALE  UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER’S  SONS 
1894 


Cdxion  (press 

171, 173  Macdougal  Street,  New  York 


IO,2,3l(' 


2.  3^ 
f 

I 


T- 

r<N 


THIS  BOOK 
IS  DEDICATED  TO 

MY  WIFE, 

WHOSE 

QUIET  HELPFULNESS  AND  FAIR  COMPANIONSHIP 
HAVE  MADE 

THE  TWENTY-FIVE  YEARS  OF  OUR  WEDDED  LIFE 
YEARS  OF  HAPPY  LABOUR 
AND 

GRACIOUS  PEACE. 


Bathgate,  February  zjth,  1868.  Oxford,  February  'jtk^  1893. 


<v 

o 


8^927k 


PREFACE. 


REATISES  in  Systematic  Theology  are  not  so 


common  as  they  once  were,  nor  are  they  so  easy 
either  to  write  or  to  read.  Criticism  has  become  so 
much  a mental  habit  and  has  changed  so  many  things 
that  we  find  it  hard  to  be  patient  with  any  process 
that  is  not  critical,  or  to  agree  with  any  principle  or 
method  that  professes  to  be  constructive.  Construction, 
indeed,  without  criticism  is  sure  to  be  invalid  ; but  the 
criticism  which  does  not  either  end  in  construction 
or  make  it  more  possible,  is  quite  as  surely  without 
any  scientific  character  or  function.  Hence,  though 
modern  criticism,  philosophical,  literary,  and  historical, 
has  made  systematic  treatises  of  the  old  order  im 
possible,  it  has  only  made  a new  endeavour  at  cgi> 
struction  the  more  necessary.  This  book  does  not 
profess  or  claim  to  be  a system  of  theology,  but  it  is 
an  attempt  at  formulating  the  fundamental  or  material 
conception  of  such  a system  ; or,  in  other  words,  it  is 
an  endeavour  through  a Christian  doctrine  of  God  at 
a sketch  of  the  first  lines  of  a Christian  Theology. 

This  endeavour  is  due  to  the  feeling  that  criticism 


Vlll 


PREFACE. 


has  placed  constructive  thought  in  a more  advantageous 
position  than  it  has  ever  before  occupied  in  the  history 
of  the  Christian  Church.  It  has  done  this  by  making 
our  knowledge  more  historical  and  real,  and  so 
bringing  our  thought  face  to  face  with  fact.  But, 
for  the  Christian  theologian,  the  most  significant 
and  assured  result  of  the  critical  process  is,  that 
he  can  now  stand  face  to  face  with  the  historical 
Christ,  and  conceive  God  as  He  conceived  Him. 
What  God  signified  to  Jesus  Christ  He  ought  to 
signify  to  all  Christian  Churches  ; and  here  all  can 
find  a point  from  which  to  study  themselves  and  their 
systems.  Theology  as  well  as  astronomy  may  be 
Ptolemaic ; it  is  so  when  the  interpreter’s  Church, 
with  its  creeds  and  traditions,  is  made  the  fixed  point 
from  which  he  observes  and  conceives  the  truth 
and  kingdom  of  God.  But  theology  may  also  be 
Copernican  ; and  it  is  so  when  the  standpoint  of  the 
interpreter  is,  as  it  were,  the  consciousness  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  this  consciousness  where  it  is  clearest  and 
most  defined,  in  the  belief  as  to  God’s  Fatherhood 
and  His  own  Sonship.  Theology  in  the  former  case  is 
geocentric,  in  the  latter  heliocentric ; and  only  where 
the  sun  is  the  centre  can  our  planetary  beliefs  and 
Churches  fall  into  a system  which  is  but  made  the 
more  complete  by  varying  degrees  of  distance  and 
differences  of  orbit. 

Of  the  two  Books  into  which  this  work  falls,  the 


PREFACE. 


IX 


first  is  concerned  with  historical  criticism,  the  second 
with  theological  construction  ; but  the  critical  process 
is  an  integral  part  of  the  constructive  endeavour.  We 
must  understand  the  factors  and  forces  that  have 
moved  and  shaped  the  theologies  of  the  past  before 
we  can,  even  in  rudest  outline,  draw  the  ground- 
plan  of  a theology  for  the  present.  Hence  came  the 
necessity  for  the  discussion,  even  within  our  narrow 
limits,  of  so  large  and  complex  a question  as  the  evolution 
of  theology  and  the  Church.  The  origin  and  action 
of  elements  alien  to  the  consciousness  of  Christ  had 
to  be  discovered,  and  the  development  of  those  native 
to  it  traced.  Then,  it  was  no  less  necessary  that  we 
should  follow  the  course  of  the  speculation  and  criticism 
that  have  compelled  the  Churches,  often  against  their 
wills  and  in  spite  of  their  own  inherent  tendencies,  to 
return  to  Christ.  The  two  histories — the  evolution  of 
theology  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  return  through 
criticism  to  Christ  on  the  other — raise  the  question  of 
the  Second  Book  : the  significance  for  theological 
thought  of  the  Christ  who  has  been,  as  it  were, 
historically  recovered.  And  here  the  Author  regrets 
that  he  has  been  forced  to  move  within  limits  which 
have  prevented  more  detailed  discussions  and  elucida- 
tions. The  omission  of  these,  especially  in  the  third 
division  of  the  Second  Book,  has  been  to  him  a real, 
though  possibly  a necessary,  act  of  self-denial. 

It  remains  for  him  only  to  thank  certain  friends 


X 


PREFACE. 


who  have  helped  him  by  kindly  reading  the  proofs, 
and  with  criticisms  and  suggestions  as  well  as  correc- 
tions ; and  among  these  he  would  name,  in  particular, 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Mackennal,  of  Bowdon ; Mr.  P.  E. 
Matheson,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  New  College;  and  Mr. 
Vernon  Bartlet,  M.A.,  Tutor  of  Mansfield  College. 
In  a very  special  degree  he  has  to  thank  Mr.  J. 
Gordon  Watt,  B.A.,  of  Mansfield  College,  for  two 
careful  and  excellent  pieces  of  work — the  Table  of 
Contents  and  the  Index. 


This  book  appears  as  the  Morse  Lecture,  but  it 
contains  matter  that  was  also  delivered  in  the  Lyman 
Beecher  Lectures  at  Yale,  besides  much  matter  that 
has  never  been  delivered  at  all.  The  author  does  not, 
for  both  literary  and  scientific  reasons,  like  to  see 
either  the  limits  or  the  form  of  the  lecture  preserved 
in  the  book  ; and  so  he  has  not  attempted  here  to 
reproduce  the  lectures,  but  simply  to  discuss  his 
subject  in  the  form  and  within  the  limits  its  importance 
seemed  to  demand.  He  is  grateful  for  the  oppor- 
tunity here  afforded  of  expressing  his  sense  of  the 
honour  done  him  both  by  Union  Seminary  and  Yale 
University  in  the  appointment  to  these  Lectureships, 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION. 

THE  RETURN  TO  CHRIST, 

i.  The  New  Element  in  Theology. 

The  growth  of  the  historical  spirit  .... 

Its  interpretation  of  Christ  and  revivifying  of  theology 

ii.  Theology  as  the  Historical  Spirit  found  it. 

Schools  in  theology : the  Evangelical  and  the  Anglican 
The  theological  library  as  it  was. 

Its  wealth  of  apologetics  . • • • . 

Biblical  exegesis  and  dogmatics  • • • . 

But  lack  of  any  history  of  Christ  .... 

iii.  The  Recovery  of  the  Historical  Christ. 

The  theological  library  as  it  is 

The  revivification  of  the  New  Testament  . • • 

The  significance  of  the  change  for  theology  , , 


PAGE 

3 

6 

9 

II 

13 

17 

18 

19 

20 


BOOK  I. 

HISTORICAL  AND  CRITICAL. 

Div.  1.—THE  LAW  OF  DEVELOPMENT  IN  THEOLOGY  AND 

THE  CHURCH. 

CHAPTER  I. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEVELOPMENT, 
i.  On  the  History  of  the  Doctrine. 

Introduction  of  term  and  idea  into  English  theology  by  Newman 
History  of  the  doctrine  in  Protestant  and  Catholic  controversy 

Newman’s  theory  of  development 

il  The  Idea  of  Development. 

Its  character  dependent  on  its  field  of  activity  . • , 

Historical  development  must  be  biological  . . • . 
Newman’s  theory  merely  logical 


25 

27 

32 

34 

35 
3^ 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

iii  Development  in  the  Church. 

Its  environments : how  these  affected  the  interpretation  of 

Christ 38 

iv.  The  Realm  of  the  Law. 

Christ  equally  for  all  Churches  the  test  of  development  • , 42 

The  law  universal  and  impartial  in  its  scope  ....  44 

CHAPTER  II. 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CHURCH. 

i.  The  Creative  Organism. 

Jesus  Christ  the  creative  and  normative  Person  • • • 47 

His  religion,  priestly  in  character,  yet  priestless  , , , 48 

ii.  The  Primitive  Environments. 

Originally  Judaic,  but  soon  Gentile 50 

Judaism  the  enemy  of  Christianity,  yet  medium  for  its  inter- 
pretation   52 

iii.  The  Immediate  Result. 

The  sub-Apostolic  age  guided  by  vulgar  tradition  rather  than 

by  Apostolic  thought 55 

CHAPTER  III. 

NEW  FACTORS  AND  NEW  LINES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

Summary  of  Positions  Determined 58 

i.  The  New  Factors  : the  External. 


1.  Greek  philosophy  . , ,,  •••••59 

2.  Roman  polity ••.60 

3.  Popular  religion 61 


Interpreted  through  these,  Christianity  became  Catholicism  . 62 

ii.  Ancient  Philosophy  and  Theology. 

Two  internal  factors : Hebrew  religion  and  Christian  history  . 63 

Hebrew  religion,  through  Philo,  changes  philosophy  into 

theology  ..........  64 

iii.  Christian  History  and  Theology. 

Christian  history  creates  the  problems  of  Christian  theology  . 66 
Theology  Eastern  and  soteriology  Western  . • • . 70 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  GREEK  MIND  AND  THEOLOGY, 
i.  Two  Minds  and  Two  Churches. 

Greek  philosophy  and  Roman  law  in  the  Greek  and  Roman 

Churches 71 

Contrast  of  thought  and  systems 73 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.  xiii 

PAGE 

ii.  The  Greek  and  Latin  Fathers. 

The  Greek  metaphysical  and  speculative  . • . , , 75 

The  Latin  political  and  forensic 76 

iii.  The  Greek  Theology. 

It  continues,  completes,  and  reflects  Greek  philosophy  . , 78 

Sketch  of  ante-Nicene  development  of  theology  , . .81 

iv.  The  Terminology. 

Derived  from  Greek  philosophy 85 

Elaborated  and  defined  through  controversy  . . , . 86 

V.  The  Merits  and  the  Defects  of  the  Theology. 

God  a unity,  more  metaphysical  than  ethical  . . • . 89 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  LATIN  THEOLOGY  AND  CHURCH. 

i.  Their  Distinctive  Factors. 

Organization  and  thought  ...... 

Imperial  Church  and  legal  theology  .... 

ii.  Tertullian. 

His  Stoic  philosophy  ...... 

His  Roman  jurisprudence 

His  sacerdotalism  and  forensic  soteriology  . . 

iii.  The  Old  Religions  and  the  New. 

The  Church  at  its  origin  without  an  official  priesthood 
The  sacerdotal  tendency  in  Tertullian  and  Cyprian  . 

Its  Hebrew  and  Gentile  causes  .... 

iv.  Thought  and  Organization  in  the  Western  Church 

The  Church  supersedes  and  inherits  Roman  Imperialism 
Summary  and  Conclusion 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SCHOLASTICISM. 

i.  The  New  Races  and  the  Old. 

The  seat  of  the  Church  in  Rome Ill 

Scholastic  philosophy  provincial,  the  work  of  the  new  Northern 

peoples 1 12 

ii.  The  New  Races  and  the  Old  Problems. 

The  problems  Augustine’s  ; his  innate  dualism  . . .US 

The  transitional  period  significant  for  polity  . . . .117 


94 

95 
98 

100 

101 

104 

105 

107 

no 


XIV 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

iii.  Scholasticism. 

A theological  period  : Anselm  and  Aristotle  . , . .118 

I.  The  religious  question  : the  relation  of  Reason  and  Faith  119 


2.  The  theological  question  : the  Atonement  . . .122 

3,  The  philosophical  question:  Nominalism  and  Realism  , 124 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  RENAISSANCE  AND  THE  REFORMATION. 

i.  The  Time  and  the  Men. 

The  decay  of  Mediaevalism  127 

The  Italian  and  Teutonic  Humanisms 130 

ii.  The  Renaissance  in  Christian  Literature:  Erasmus. 

Contemporary  comparison  of  primitive  Christianity  and 

Catholicism 131 

Erasmus : his  labours  on  the  New  Testament  ....  132 

His  criticism  of  Catholic  doctrines  and  practices  . , .134 

iii.  The  Reformation  : Luther. 

Protestantism  and  Humanism , 137 

Luther,  a reformer  by  necessity  : his  doctrine  of  grace  . .138 

The  new  movement : its  leaders  and  its  failures  . , , 141 

iv.  Calvin  and  Geneva. 

Calvin  and  Luther  contrasted 144 

His  doctrine  of  God ; his  unconditionalism  in  theology  and 

polity 145 

Calvinism  the  conscious  and  constructive  antithesis  to  Rome  . 148 

The  influence  of  Geneva ,150 


CHAPTER  VIH. 

THE  MODERN  CHURCHES  AND  THEIR  THEOLOGIES. 

The  Return  to  the  Religion  of  the  Sources  , . .152 


i.  Relation  of  Church  to  Theology. 

Institutional  Theologies  and  theological  Churches  , • .154 

The  material  conceptions  of  the  modern  Churches  . • *155 

ii.  Catholicism  and  Theology. 

Catholic  theology  political  and  polemical  . • • • .156 

Tradition  and  Scripture • ,158 

iii.  The  Lutheran  Theology. 

Its  determinative  idea  : justification  by  faith  , • • *159 

The  Scriptures  and  the  Sacraments l6i 


The  communicatio  idiomatum  and  scientific  Christology  . . 161 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.  XV 


PAGE 

iv  The  Reformed  Theology. 


Its  determinative  idea  : the  sovereignty  of  God 

• 

162 

I.  The  supralapsarian  school 

• 

• 

• 

163 

Its  affinity  to  Stoicism  and  Pantheism  . 

• 

• 

• 

164 

2.  The  sublapsarian  school  .... 

• 

• 

• 

168 

The  double  criticism  of  Calvinism. 

A.  The  Arminian  : its  conditionalism  • 

• 

• 

169 

B.  The  Socinian  

• 

• 

172 

Consequent  modifications  in  soteriology  and  theology 

• 

• 

173 

The  modern  evangelical  theology 

• 

• 

• 

175 

1.  Theology  and  the  English  Church. 

The  institutional  schools,  the  High  Church  and  the  Broad 

176 

The  theological  schools,  the  old  Puritan  and 

the 

modern 

Evangelical 

. 

. 

179 

Puritan  and  Anglican  ideals  compared  , • 

• 

• 

180 

Anglican  theology 

182 

Its  apologetic  and  antiquarian  character  , • 

• 

• 

• 

183 

i.  Retrospect  and  Conclusions. 

The  modern  return  to  the  historical  Christ  • 

• 

• 

• 

186 

Note  to  p.  182 

188 

Div.  ll.—BISTOJ^ICAL  CRITICISM  AND  THE  HISTORY  OF  CHRIST, 

CHAPTER  I. 

THROUGH  LITERATURE  AND  PHILOSOPHY  TO  CRITICISM. 


The  Anglican  Revival  and  German  Criticism  . . .191 

i.  The  Beginnings  of  Historical  Criticism:  Literature. 

1.  Lessing,  its  founder:  on  revelation  and  religion  . . . 192 

2.  Schiller 195 

3.  Goethe 196 

ii.  Historical  Criticism  : Romanticism  and  Theology. 

Herder’s  influence  on  theology  and  Biblical  study  . • , 199 

iii.  Philosophy  and  Historical  Criticism. 

1.  Philosophy  English  and  German 203 

2.  Kant’s  ethical  Theism • . 205 

3.  Jacobi’s  Intuitionalism  206 

4.  Fichte’s  Idealism:  his  Johannean  theology  ....  207 


I 


XVI 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

iv.  Philosophy  and  the  Incarnation  : Schelling. 

His  speculative  Christianity  209 

The  Incarnation,  the  Church,  Redemption  , , , ,211 

V.  Philosophy  and  Historical  Christianity:  Hegel. 

His  philosophy  historical,  but  not  critical  ....  214 

The  absolute  religion,  one  with  the  absolute  philosophy  . .217 

Philosophy  transfigures  dogmatic 221 

vi.  Historical  Criticism  and  Theology:  Schleiermacher. 

His  versatility  and  enthusiasm 223 

The  feeling  of  dependence  in  religion 224 

The  consciousness  of  Christ  and  the  Christian  consciousness  . 226 


CHAPTER  II. 

PHILOSOPHICAL  CRITICISM  AND  THE  HISTORY  OF  JESUS. 

The  Beginnings  of  Criticism  of  the  Gospels  • • . 230 


i.  Strauss  and  his  Masters. 

Strauss  in  Berlin 232 

The  influence  of  Hegel  and  Schleiermacher  ....  233 

ii.  The  “ Leben  Jesu.” 

Strauss  a speculative  philosopher 235 

The  mythical  theory . 240 

iii.  The  Counter  Criticism. 

The  criticism  of  panic  ........  242 

Relevant  criticism 245 

iv.  Concessions  and  Conclusion. 

His  irenical  attitude  • • 247 

Jesus  the  religious  genius 248 

Withdrawal  of  concessions  . • . • • *252 


CHAPTER  III. 

LITERARY  CRITICISM.— THE  TUBINGEN  SCHOOL. 

i.  The  Critical  Problem  and  Christology. 

Historical  criticism  corrects  speculation  . • • • • 254 

The  new  Christologies  ..••••••  257 

ii.  Ferdinand  Christian  Baur. 

His  mental  history  . . , • . . • • .259 

His  conversion  to  Hegelianism . . . • . • .261 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.  xvii 

PAGE 

iii.  How  Baur  came  to  his  Problem. 

His  speculative  Christology  ..•••••  263 

To  him  the  historical  problem  positive  • • • • • 265 

The  Pauline  and  Petrine  antitheses  .•••••  267 

iv.  How  Baur  solved  his  Problem. 

The  Catholic  Church  the  synthesis  of  these  antitheses  • • 269 

The  theory  of  tendencies  and  the  Gospels  . . • . 270 

The  Tubingen  School 272 

V.  Where  the  Tubingen  Criticism  failed,  and  why. 

The  criticism  subjective  and  one-sided  . • . • • 273 

Its  want  of  historical  veracity  . • • • • • #275 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  NEWER  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  AND  THE  HISTORICAL  CHRIST. 

i.  Through  Criticism  to  History. 

Histories  of  Christ,  French,  English,  and  German  . • . 278 

“ Vie  de  Jesus” . 278 

“ Ecce  Homo  ” 279 

The  New  Strauss  and  other  German  works  • • • • 280 

ii.  Through  History  to  Theology. 

1.  Contemporary  history  more  fully  studied  . , • . 286 

2.  Constructive  historical  criticism  288 

3.  The  newer  literary  criticism  . 291 

4.  Biblical  theology  ..•••••••  292 

iii.  Results  and  Inferences. 

1.  The  recovery  of  the  historical  Christ  • • • • • 294 

2.  The  new  feeling  for  Him  in  literature  . • • • • 294 

3.  4.  He  is  the  norm  for  all  Churches  . . . • *295 

5.  6.  And  the  starting-point  for  criticism  and  theology  • , 296 


3 


XVllI 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


BOOK  II. 


THEOLOGICAL  AND  CON^^TRUCTIVE, 

Div.  \,—THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRIST, 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE  EXPOSITORY  BOOKS. 

The  Interpretation  of  Christ  in  the  New  Testament 
L The  Pauline  Christology. 

A,  Historical  relations  and  characteristics  • • , 

B.  I.  The  theology. 

Jesus,  the  Messiah  • • . 

His  Divine  Sonship  • • , 

II.  The  soteriology. 

1.  The  system  of  the  earlier  Epistles 

Christ,  the  Second  Adam 
The  Pauline  philosophy  of  history  ; the  old  order 
and  the  new  . 

2.  The  later  system 

The  Son,  alike  Creator  and  Saviour  ; His  cosmical 
relations 

ii.  The  Christology  of  Hebrews. 

A.  Its  specific  character  . .••••• 

B,  Its  theology:  Jesus  the  Son  of  God 

The  essential  relation  of  the  Son  to  the  Father 

The  finality  of  the  New  Covenant : a series  of  contrasts  . 


PAGE 

302 

303 

306 

307 

310 

310 

314 

317 

318 

320 

322 

323 

324 


iii.  The  Minor  Christologies. 

A.  The  Jacobean  •••••••••  328 

B.  The  Petrine  •••••••••  330 

C.  The  Apocalyptic  332 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  HISTORICAL  BOOKS. 


i.  The  Synoptic  Gospels. 

A.  Mark  . 

B.  Matthew  • • 

C.  Luke  . • , 


334 

335 
337 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


ii.  The  Fourth  Gospel. 

A.  Relations  and  characteristics  of  the  Gospel 

B.  Christology  : the  Word  and  the  Son  , • 
The  history  symbolical  ol  the  ideal  . , • 

iii.  The  Ideal  Person  and  the  Real  History. 

Jesus  supernatural,  yet  human  .... 
The  Temptation  ; the  normal  humanity  of  Christ 
His  supernatural  office  and  work  , 


xix 

PAGE 

. 338 
. 341 
. 342 

. 346 
. 34S 
. 353 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  CHRISTOLOGY  OF  CHRIST. 

i.  Significance  of  His  Names. 

A,  The  Christ  358 

B,  The  Son  of  God • . • 359 

C,  The  Son  of  man  : its  personal  and  its  official  sense  • .361 

ii.  The  Names  and  the  Mission. 

The  double  Sonship  364 

Correlation  of  the  terms  in  the  Fourth  Gospel . • • • 365 

Sonship  and  Fatherhood  368 

iii.  His  Person  and  Place. 

His  message  to  man — the  interpretation  of  Himself.  • • 369 

The  necessary,  sufficient,  and  accessible  Mediator  • • #371 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  RELATIONS  AND  THE  REASOxN  OF  THE  CHRISTOLOGIES. 

i.  Comparison  of  the  Apostolic  Christologies  with  Christ’s. 

Affinities,  historical,  religious,  philosophical,  and  theological  . 373 

ii.  CONCLUSORY  AND  TRANSITIONAL. 

The  Apostolical  and  naturalistic  interpretations  of  Christ  • 377 
The  verdict  of  history  on  the  Person  and  His  work  . • • 378 

The  vindication  of  the  Apostolical  theology  . « , *381 

Its  influence  on  the  thought  and  life  of  men  . • . . 382 

Div.  II.— CJIB/ST  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  GOD, 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE  GODHEAD. 

i.  The  Doctrine  of  the  Godhead  and  Revelation. 

God  and  the  Godhead , 385 

Revelation  changes  idea  of  God  into  knowledge  of  the  Godhead  386 


XX 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

ii.  The  Doctrines  of  God  and  the  Godhead. 

Their  history  and  function  in  Christian  theology  , , , 388 

Consequent  conceptions  of  the  sonship  of  man  • • • 390 

iii.  Christ  and  the  Godhead. 

Father  and  Son  in  the  Godhead  391 

The  Christian  Trinity  and  ethnic  parallels  • . . . 395 

iv.  The  Godhead  as  a Doctrine. 

The  Sonship  of  Christ  and  the  sonship  of  humanity  • , 397 

The  essential  distinctions  in  the  unity  of  God  ....  398 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  GODHEAD  AND  THE  DEITY  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY. 

i.  God  in  Theism  and  Theology. 

The  philosophical  and  the  religious  conceptions  of  God  , » 401 

ii.  The  Godhead  and  the  Character  of  God. 

Unethicized  conceptions  of  God  ...••#  403 
The  Christian  conception  completely  ethicized  . , . 405 

iii.  The  Godhead  as  it  affects  the  Notions  of  Creator  and 

THE  Creation. 

Theistic  difficulties : the  relation  of  God  to  the  world 
How  mitigated  by  the  conception  of  the  Godhead  . 

The  eternal  love  of  God  the  motive  of  the  creative  act 

iv.  The  Godhead  and  Providence. 

Deism  and  Pantheism 

Deity  transcendent,  yet  immanent  .... 

V.  The  Godhead  and  the  External  Relations  of  God. 

The  instrumental  and  the  personal  worlds 
Nature  a middle  term  between  God  and  man  . . 

The  personal  world  alone  real  to  God  . . . 

The  creative  Will,  eternal  and  universal  . . . 

Resultant  ethicized  conception  of  the  universe . • 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  GODHEAD  AND  THE  DEITY  OF  CONSTRUCTIVE  THEOLOGY. 

i.  The  Theistic  Conception  and  Theology. 

A commu7iicatio  idiomatum  between  God  and  the  Godhead  . 426 

ii.  The  Juridical  Deity. 

In  Catholicism,  as  political  and  legal  • • • • # 429 

In  Calvinism,  as  the  sovereign  Will  »••••.  430 


. 406 
. 408 

. 410 

. 414 
. 415 

. 417 
. 419 
. 421 
. 421 
. 423 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


XXI 


PAGE 

iii.  Whether  and  in  what  Sense  God  is  a Sovereign. 


Dr.  Candlish’s  position  examined 432 

Paternity  and  sovereignty  indissoluble 434 

iv.  The  Sovereignty  of  Law  and  of  God. 

Legal  V.  paternal  sovereignty  43^ 

God  in  the  filial  consciousness  of  Christ 439 

V.  God  as  Father  and  as  Sovereign. 

The  unit}'  of  love  and  righteousness  .•••••  44^ 

Both  necessary  to  God 443 

vi.  Paternity  and  Sonship. 

Fatherhood  primary  and  determinative  of  sovereignty  , , 444 
The  sonship  of  nature  and  the  sonship  of  grace  . • . 446 


Div.  III.— A.  GOD  AS  INTERPRETED  BY  CHRIST  THE 
DETERMINATIVE  PRINCIPLE  IN  THEOLOGY. 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE  FATHERHOOD  AND  SIN. 

i.  The  Formal  and  the  Material  Principle  of  Theology. 

The  formal,  the  consciousness  of  Christ 449 

The  material,  the  Fatherhood  of  God 451 

ii.  The  Doctrine  of  Sin. 

Sin  how  defined  and  conceived 452 

The  peculiar  creation  of  Christianity 454 

iii.  The  Permission  and  Diffusion  of  Sin. 

Sin  and  obedience  as  related  to  sonship 456 

Original  sin  and  heredity 458 

iv.  Sin  Common  and  Transmitted. 

The  sin  of  nature  . . . 459 

The  unity  and  solidarity  of  the  race  ......  460 

V.  Sin  and  the  Regal  Paternity. 

The  Father  wills  the  salvation  of  man 463 

The  Sovereign  wills  the  expulsion  of  sin 465 

Neither  annihilation  nor  compulsory  salvation  ....  466 

CHAPTER  H. 

THE  FATHERHOOD  AND  SOTERIOLOGY. 

i.  The  Incarnation. 

Jesus  Christ,  the  incarnate  Son  of  God  .....  470 
The  two  natures : Sonship  involves  their  affinity  ...  472 
The  attributes  of  God  and  the  kenosis  . . , , *475 

The  relation  ot  the  natures  within  the  incarnate  Person  . . 478 


XXll 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

il  The  Atonement. 

The  condemnation  of  sin  the  ground  of  salvation  , , , 479 

The  sacrifice  of  the  Son  and  the  revelation  of  the  Father.  , 483 

A new  consciousness  of  God  and  of  sin 485 

Principles  deduced  •••••••••  486 

iii.  The  Holy  Spirit. 

The  immanent  presence  of  God  in  man  . . , • • 487 

The  Spirit  in  the  teaching  of  Christ  and  the  Church  • , 488 

The  Holy  Spirit,  the  renewer  and  revealer  • • • #491 


CHAPTER  III. 

REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION. 

i.  Religion  and  Revelation. 

Revelation  a necessity  to  religion  • • • • • 

The  place  of  an  historical  revelation.  • • • • 

ii.  Revelation  and  Inspiration. 

Their  correlation  and  functions  • • • • • 

The  Scriptures  and  the  Church  • • • • • 

iii.  The  Scriptures  and  Criticism. 

Catholic  and  rationalist  polemic  • • • • • 

The  legitimacy  of  the  higher  criticism  . • • • 

The  authority  of  the  Scriptures  as  a revelation.  • • 

iv.  The  Bible  as  the  Authority  in  Religion. 

Function  of  canonization 

Authority  attribute  not  of  book  but  of  revelation  • • 

V.  Whether  a Constructive  Doctrine  be  Possible. 

The  essentials  and  the  accidents  of  revelation  and  religion 
The  Spirit  and  the  Word  .•••••• 


493 

495 

496 
498 

500 

502 

504 

506 

508 

509 

510 


^.—  GOD  AS  INTERPRETED  BY  CHRIST  THE  DETERMINATIVE 
PRINCIPLE  IN  THE  CHURCH, 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT. 

i.  The  Conceptions  of  God  and  the  Church. 

The  Monotheism  of  Jesus  Christ  ..••••  5^3 

ii.  Christ  and  the  Idea  of  the  Church. 

The  kingdom  of  God  . , , • . • • *5^5 

Its  ministry  not  sacerdotal  , , , • • • .5^7 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.  xxiii 

PAGE 

iii.  The  Apostolic  Idea  of  the  Church. 

The  Church  or  • *519 

\.OQ.2\  ecclesiae'.  their  autonomy  . , , • • .520 

The  universal  ecclesia^  the  body  of  Christ 522 

The  mystical  Church,  the  spouse  of  Christ  . . • • 525 

iv.  The  Church  as  the  Kingdom  and  People  of  God. 

Ideas  of  Church  and  kingdom 528 

The  Church  the  filial  society 529 

V.  The  Church  and  its  Organization. 

Apostolic  succession • , *531 

The  priesthood 533 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  CHURCH  IN  THEOLOGY. 

i.  The  Church  and  its  Polity. 

Material  and  formal  character  •••••••  535 

Polity  and  community , 537 

Apostolic  descent  of  the  Church  ••••••  540 

ii.  The  Church  Visible  and  Invisible. 

Doctrine  and  difficulties  of  Augustine  • • • • . 541 

Doctrine  of  Reformers 543 

iii.  The  Church  of  God — Holy,  Catholic,  and  Apostolic. 

His  people  545 

The  Church  is  as  God  is.  •••••••  547 

Index 549 


INTRODUCTION: 

THE  RETURN  TO  CHRIST. 


Kal  6 0e6s  avrhv  iirep^xpioffe,  kuI  ixo-pl^o^aTO  airip  rb  buofia 
TO  birtp  irav  Svofxa'  Xva.  iv  rip  6v6p.aTL  ’lijcrov  irav  yovv  Kdfjitpri 
iirovpaviwv  /cat  iiriyeiiou  Kal  KaraxdovLuu,  Kal  TrSaa  y'KCba-iTa 
e^opio\oyT^<Tr]TaL  6ti  Kdpios  ’Ii^aoDs  X/sioros,  ets  db^av  QeoO 
xaTpds. — Paul,  Phil.  ii.  9-II, 


I 


AiJo  yhp,  <t)7  eoiK€V,  Uph  0eoO,  Ij'  p.kv  6'5e  6 Kbfffioi,  iv  <p  Kal  apxi€p€{is, 
6 Trpujrbyovos  airov  detos  \6yos.  irepov  XoyiKT]  iepeds  6 Trpbt 

dXTjdeLav  avdpwTTos  e(TTLV. — Philo,  “De  Som.,”i.,  § 37;  tom.  i.,  653. 

HapaTToiKdciXei  ydp  dv  rb  tQp  dvdpibirojv  yepos,  el  pJ^  6 iravTiav  becTcbTris 
Kal  Swrr?/)  rou  Qeou  Tibs  irapeyeyovei  irpbs  rb  tov  davarov  rbXos. — 
Athanasius,  “De  Incar.  Verbi,”  ix.  4. 

Hunc  ille  Platonicus  non  cognovit  esse  principium ; nam  agnosceret 
purgatorium.  Neque  enim  caro  principium  est,  aut  anima  humana, 
sed  Verbum  per  quod  facta  sunt  omnia.  Non  ergo  caro  per  se  ipsam 
mundat,  sed  per  Verbum  a quo  suscepta  est,  cum  Verbum  caro  factum 
estj  et  habitavit  in  nobis. — Augustine,  “ De  Civ.  Dei,”  x.  24. 

Quatenus  autem  Christus  mundum^^^vivificat : hinc  est  quod  deus 
deique  filius  est,  non  quod  caro  est. — Zwingli,  “Ep.  ad  Alberum,” 
Opera,  vol.  iii.,  p.  595  (1832  ed.). 

Der  eigentliche  Inhalt  des  Christenthums  ist  aber  ganz  allein  die 
Person  Christi : . . . Man  kann  also  sagen  : In  einer  Philosophie  der 
Olfenbarung  handle  es  sich  allein  oder  doch  nur  vorziiglich  darum,  die 
Person  Christi  zu  begreifen.  Christus  ist  nicht  der  Lehrer,  wie  man 
zu  sagen  pflegt,  Christus  nicht  der  Stifter;  er  ist  der  Inhalt  des 
Christenthums. — Schelling,  “ Philos,  der  Olfenbarung,”  Vorlesg.  xxv. 


§ I.— The  New  Element  in  Theology. 


The  most  distinctive  and  determinative  element  in 
modern  theology  is  what  we  may  term  a new  feeling 
for  Christ.  By  this  feeling  its  specific  character  is  at  once 
defined  and  expressed.  But  we  feel  Him  more  in  our 
theology  because  we  know  Him  better  in^  history.  His 
historical  reality  and  significance  have  broken  upon  us  with 
something  of  the  surprise  of  a discovery,  and  He  has,  as  it 
were,  become  to  us  a new  and  more  actual  Being.  It  is 
certainly  not  too  much  to  say.  He  is  to-day  more  studied 
and  better  known  as  He  was  and  as  He  lived  than  at  any 
period  between  now  and  the  first  age  of  the  Church.  There 
is  indeed  this  difference  between  then  and  now — He  is 
studied  now  through  the  intervening  history  and  in  its  light  ; 
He  was  studied  then  only  in  the  light  of  His  personal 
history  and  the  past  that  lay  behind  it.  But,  apart  from 
this  necessary  difference,  we  feel  His  personal  presence  in 
all  our  thinking  more  in-  the  manner  of  the  apostolic  than 
of  any  other  age ; and  so  we  are  being  forced  to  come 
to  the  theology  of  the  schools  and  the  conventions  of  the 
Churches  through  Him  rather  than  to  Him  through  these. 
This  may  be  said  to  be  the  distinction  between  the  old 
theology  and  the  new  : the  former  was  primarily  doctrinal  and 
secondarily  historical ; but  the  latter  is  primarily  historical 
and  secondarily  doctrinal.  The  old  theology  came  to  history 
through  doctrine,  but  the  new  comes  to  doctrine  through  his- 
tory ; to  the  one  all  historical  questions  were  really  dogmatic. 


3 


4 


THE  RENAISSANCE. 


but  to  the  other  all  dogmatic  questions  are  formally  his- 
torical. This  does  not  mean  the  surrender  of  doctrine,  but 
rather  the  enlargement  of  its  meaning  and  scope.  For  when 
history  is  read  through  doctrine,  the  realm  of  realities  is 
reduced  to  the  size  and  beaten  into  the  shape  of  a very 
restricted  and  rigorously  ordered  world  of  ideas  ; but  where 
doctrine  is  read  through  history,  the  realm  of  ideas  must 
be  so  widened  and  articulated  as  to  represent  the  realm  of 
realities.  Harmony  of  history  with  belief  was  the  note 
of  the  one  school ; harmony  of  belief  with  history  is  the 
note  of  the  other  ; and  of  these  harmonies  the  second,  as 
the  more  natural,  is  at  once  the  more  necessary  and  the 
more  difficult  to  attain. 

This  recovery  of  the  historical  Christ,  and  consequent 
new  feeling  for  Him,  is  due  to  many  causes,  mainly  to  the 
growth  of  the  historical  spirit.  This  spirit  is  not  new,  though 
its  methods  are ; but  it  is  more  scientific,  sympathetic, 
veracious,  than  of  old.  In  its  more  modern  form  it  may 
be  said  to  have  begun  with  Romanticism,  or  the  attempt 
by  a poetic  interpretation  of  the  past  to  escape  from  the 
prosaic  realities  of  the  present.  Romanticism  differed  from 
the  classical  Renaissance  in  the  field  it  selected  for  its 
imaginative  activity  and  appreciation,  but  agreed  with  it 
in  the  tendency  to  idealize  and  in  the  endeavour  to  imitate 
what  it  found  and  admired  in  its  selected  field.  The  ideals  of 
the  Renaissance  were  all  classical  ; the  literatures  of  Greece 
and  Rome  were  to  it  the  standards  of  taste,  imitation  of  their 
flexible  yet  stately  elegance  at  once  its  inspiration  and  its 
despair  ; it  studied  classical  art,  derived  from  it  all  its  ideas  of 
the  beautiful,  and  laboured  to  embody  them  in  a sculpture  and 
architecture  that  were  judged  to  be  most  excellent  when  most 
like  their  models.  The  dream  of  the  Renaissance  was  to  escape 
from  the  Italy  of  the  fifteenth  century  into  the  Athens  of 
Pericles  or  Plato,  or  into  the  Rome  of  Cicero  or  Augustus. 
But  the  ideals  of  Romanticism  lay  in  the  past  of  the  Western 


ROMANTICISM. 


5 


European  peoples  and  of  their  religion.  Its  field  was  the 
Middle  Ages ; it  glorified  their  chivalry,  legends,  poetry,  art, 
faith,  and  what  it  glorified  it  could  not  help  attempting  to 
imitate.  Literature  became  disdainful  of  the  cold  and  artful 
elegance  of  the  classic  style,  and  grew  warmer,  more  vehement, 
quicker  to  feel  and  to  reflect  the  more  rudimentary  emotions 
of  human  nature,  those  primitive  and  spontaneous  passions 
which  culture  tends  to  tame  or  expel.  In  Painting  there  was 
formed  the  pre-Raphaelite  school,  which  studiously  aimed  at 
breaking  away  from  a classicism  that  had  become  conven- 
tional and  attaining  a more  realistic  idealism,  an  art  that  should 
in  the  interests  of  the  ideal  be  frankly  natural,  though  in  its 
members,  according  to  their  native  tempers,  now  the  natural 
and  now  the  ideal  predominated.  In  Architecture  the  move- 
ment found  expression  in  the  Gothic  revival ; ruined  abbeys 
were  curiously  studied,  old  churches  incautiously  restored,  new 
churches  built  in  every  variety  of  Gothic,  hideous,  hybrid, 
and  historical,  and,  in  general,  the  idea  zealously  preached  and 
industriously  realized  that  Gothic  was  the  only  fit  style  for 
the  religious  edifice.  In  Worship  the  imitative  medisevalism 
which  is  known  as  ritualism  came  to  be,  and  vestments,  acts, 
articles,  and  modes  proper  to  the  worship  of  the  period 
represented  by  the  buildings  were  so  used  as  to  make  the 
revival  complete. 

The  course  and  the  phenomena  of  the  classical  and  the 
mediaeval  revivals  are  thus  exactly  parallel  ; each  is  alike 
imitative,  in  each  imitation  runs  into  extravagance,  and  ex- 
travagance ends  in  the  exhaustion  whose  only  issue  is  death. 
But  neither  passed  away  resultless.  Out  of  the  Renaissance 
came,  after  the  season  of  imjtative  subserviency  to  Greece 
and  Rome  had  ceased,  the  mastery  of  classical  literature  and 
the  knowledge  of  classical  art  that  have  made  them  the  great 
instruments  of  culture,  though  their  power  lies  in  their  being 
instruments  commanded  by  the  mind,  not  commanding  it. 
Out  of  Romanticism  there  has  come,  for  all  save  those  who 


6 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  CHRIST. 


are  still  in  the  stage  of  servile  reproduction,  love  of  the  past, 
the  knowledge  of  it  that  can  come  only  through  love,  and 
the  sense  of  the  connection  and  the  continuity  of  man  in  all 
the  periods  and  in  all  the  places  of  his  being.  Both  had, 
therefore,  a kindred  though  not  an  identical  function  ; each, 
by  creating  knowledge  of  a specific  past,  helped  to  supply 
history  with  the  ideas  and  the  spirit  that  made  it  a science. 
They  taught  us  to  see  events  in  their  relations,  to  search 
into  their  causes,  to  study  persons  through  their  times  and 
the  times  in  the  persons,  to  discover  the  conditions  that  regu- 
lated the  growth  and  decay  of  institutions,  to  find  in  what 
seemed  a chaos  of  conflicting  wills  a principle  of  order  and  a 
law  of  progress.  And  just  as  we  have  learned  to  read  the 
past  truly  we  have  come  to  understand  man  really  ; what 
makes  the  race  re-live  its  life  to  the  imagination  makes  the 
reason  know  not  only  the  race  but  the  units  who  compose  it. 
To  penetrate  the  secret  of  man  is  to  discover  the  truth  of 
God  ; in  a sense  higher  than  Feuerbach  dreamed  of  anthro- 
pology is  theology. 

Now,  the  historical  spirit  could  not  do  its  now  destructive 
and  now  constructive  work  and  ignore  the  Supreme  Person 
of  history.  He  has  left  the  mark  of  His  hand  on  every 
generation  of  civilized  men  that  has  lived  since  He  lived,  and 
it  would  not  be  science  to  find  Him  everywhere  and  never  to 
ask  what  He  was  and  what  He  did.  Persons  are  the  most 
potent  factors  of  progress  and  change  in  history,  and  the 
greatest  Person  known  to  it  is  the  One  who  has  been  the 
most  powerful  factor  of  ordered  progress.  Who  this  is  does 
not  lie  open  to  dispute.  Jesus  Christ  is  a name  that  repre- 
sents the  most  wonderful  story  and  the  profoundest  problem 
on  the  field  of  history — the  one  because  the  other.  There 
is  no  romance  so  marvellous  as  the  most  prosaic  version 
of  His  history.  The  Son  of  a despised  and  hated  people, 
meanly  born,  humbly  bred,  without  letters,  without  oppor- 
tunity, unbefriended,  never  save  for  one  brief  and  fatal 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  HISTORY. 


7 


moment  the  idol  of  the  crowd,  opposed  by  the  rich,  resisted 
by  the  religious  and  the  learned,  persecuted  unto  death  by 
the  priests,  destined  to  a life  as  short  as  it  was  obscure, 
issuing  from  His  obscurity  only  to  meet  a death %of  unpitied 
infamy.  He  yet,  by  means  of  His  very  sufferings  and  His 
cross,  enters  upon  a throne  such  as  no  monarch  ever  filled 
and  a dominion  such  as  no  Caesar  ever  exercised.  He  leads 
captive  the  civilized  peoples  ; they  accept  His  words  as  law, 
though  they  confess  it  a law  higher  than  human  nature  likes 
to  obey  ; they  build  Him  churches,  they  worship  Him,  they 
praise  Him  in  songs,  interpret  Him  in  philosophies  and 
theologies  ; they  deeply  love,  they  madly  hate,  for  His  sake. 
It  was  a new  thing  in  the  history  of  the  world  ; for  though 
this  humble  life  was  written  and  stood  vivid  before  the  eye 
and  imagination  of  men,  nay,  because  it  veritably  did  so 
stand,  they  honoured,  loved,  served  Him  as  no  ancient  deity 
had  been  honoured,  loved,  or  served.  We  may  say,  indeed, 
He  was  the  first  being  who  had  realized  for  man  the  idea  of 
the  Divine  ; He  proved  His  Godhead  by  making  God  become 
a credible,  conceived,  believed,  real  Being  to  man.  And  all 
this  was  due  to  no  temporary  passion,  to  no  transient  madness, 
such  as  now  and  then  overtakes  peoples  as  well  as  persons. 
It  has  been  the  most  permanent  thing  in  the  history  of 
mind  ; no  other  belief  has  had  so  continuous  and  invariable 
a history.  The  gods  of  Greece  lived  an  even  more  changeful 
life  than  the  Greek  men  ; the  Zeus  of  Homer  and  of  Plato, 
though  one  in  name,  is  in  character  not  only  two,  but  two 
radical  opposites.  The  history  of  religion  in  India  is  but  a 
record  of  the  variations  and  the  multiplication  of  deities.  The 
mythologies  of  Mesopotamia  and  Egypt  were  never  fixed  ; 
they  bewilder  by  the  number  and  extent  of  the  changes  in 
the  crowd  of  figures  they  present  for  analysis.  But  the  belief 
in  Christ  has  for  now  almost  two  thousand  years  lived  under 
a criticism  the  most  searching  and  scientific  that  ever  assailed 
any  idea  of  mind  or  fact  of  history,  and  yet  this  criticism 


8 


CRITICISM  AND  FAITH. 


has  only  made  the  belief  more  active,  more  vigorous,  more 
sure  of  its  intrinsic  truth  and  reasonableness.  What  makes 
the  result  more  wonderful  is,  that  the  criticism  was  at  its 
thoroughest  when  the  faith  seemed  at  its  weakest.  In  the 
first  centuries  of  its  existence,  when  it  had  to  suffer  from  the 
reproach  of  its  recent  and  mean  origin,  the  infamy  of  its 
Founder’s  death,  the  poverty  and  ignorance  of  its  adherents, 
and  its  varied  offences  against  Greek  culture  and  Roman 
policy, — it  had  to  bear  the  malignant  yet  searching  criticism 
of  Celsus,  the  witty  satire  of  Lucian,  the ' vindictive  and 
insolent  invective  of  the  rhetors  and  their  schools.  Yet  the 
men  of  the  new  religion  were,  even  within  the  arena  of  letters, 
victorious  over  the  men  of  the  old  learning.  And  both  in 
the  last  century  and  in  this,  when  it  seemed  weak  through 
continued  supremacy,  the  exercise  of  a too  secular  lordship, 
and  the  reproach  of  lives  which  it  nominally  guided  but  did 
not  really  command,  it  received  but  renewal  at  the  hands  of 
the  subtle  scepticism  of  Hume  and  the  destructive  criticism  of 
Strauss.  The  wonderful  thing  in  the  story  is,  that  what  in  the 
abstract  would  have  seemed  impossible  romance  is  in  reality 
the  most  sober  fact;  while  out  of  the  story,  when  viewed 
in  relation  to  the  course  of  human  development,  rises  for 
philosophy  the  problem.  Can  He,  so  mean  in  life,  so  illustrious 
in  history,  stand  where  He  does  by  chance  ? Can  He,  who 
of  all  persons  is  the  most  necessary  to  the  orderly  and  pro- 
gressive course  of  history,  be  but  the  fortuitous  result  of  a 
chapter  of  accidents? 

Now,  how  has  tWs  new  feeling  for  Christ  affected  construc- 
tive Christian  theology?  We  have  just  seen  that  historical 
inquiry  raises  questions  that  belong  to  the  philosophy  of 
history,  which  is  but  the  most  concrete  form  of  the  philosophy 
alike  of  nature  and  man.  We  cannot  conceive  and  describe 
the  supreme  historical  Person  without  coming  face  to  face  with 
the  profoundest  of  all  the  problems  in  theology  ; but  then 
vwe  may  come  to  them  from  an  entirely  changed  point  of  view. 


SCHOOLS  IN  THEOLOGY. 


9 


through  the  Person  that  has  to  be  interpreted  rather  than 
through  the  interpretations  of  His  person.  When  this  change 
is  effected,  theology  ceases  to  be  scholastic,  and  becomes 
historical ; and  this  precisely  represents  the  change  which 
it  has  undergone  or  is  undergoing.  The  speculative  counter- 
part of  the  new  feeling  for  Christ  is  the  rejuvenescence  of 
theology. 

But  that  we  may  understand  what  this  new  factor  in 
theology  means,  we  must  briefly  review  the  state  of  theo- 
logical knowledge  and  inquiry  in  the  period  which  saw  the 
birth  of  our  modern  historical  criticism. 

§ II.— Theology  as  the  Historical  Spirit  found  it. 

When  the  new  historical  spirit  began  to  concern  itself  with 
theology,  the  field  of  dogmatic  thought  was  with  us  occupied 
by  two  opposed  schools — the  Evangelical  and  the  Anglican — 
then  just  entering  upon  the  specific  phase  known  as  the 
Tractarian.  The  Evangelical  represented  the  beliefs  that 
had  during  the  previous  century  been  the  most  active  and 
vigorous,  the  most  charged  with  creative  enthusiasm  and 
recreative  energies ; the  Anglican  represented  beliefs  that 
had  been  long  decadent,  and  were  now  blindly  and  stormily 
struggling  towards  a second  birth.  The  Evangelical,  though 
touched  with  a Puritan  tendency,  had  almost  lost  the 
Puritan  spirit,  having  become  individualistic  in  a sense  and 
to  a degree  the  Puritans  would  have  abhorred  ; the  Anglican, 
though  with  some  Catholic  impulses  and  many  claims  to 
an  historical  temper,  was  still  strongly  provincial  and 
arbitrary,  not  to  say  violent.  The  Evangelicals  had  ac- 
complished the  religious  revival  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
had  contended  against  its  sordid  earthliness,  its  low  morals, 
its  sodden  and  conventional  unbelief,  and  had  created  the 
great  philanthropies  that  improved  the  prisons,  reformed 
manners,  befriended  the  lower  races,  and  emancipated  the 


lO 


THE  EVANGELICAL  AND  THE  ANGLICAN. 


slaves ; but  the  Anglicans  had  the  spirit  and  the  passion  that 
were  to  achieve  the  distinctive  revival  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  The  speech  of  the  Evangelical  was  of  doctrine, 
z.e.y  revealed  truth  correctly  taught,  conceived,  and  received  ; 
the  speech  of  the  Anglican  was  of  dogma,  i.e.^  truth  as 
defined,  formulated,  and  enforced  by  the  decree  of  a body 
politic,  or  the  heads  of  such  a body.  The  Evangelical 
position,  as  in  essence  doctrinal,  conceived  the  relations 
of  God  and  man  as  determined  by  certain  beliefs  which, 
articulated  in  fixed  formulae,  were  alternatively  represented 
as  “ the  truth  ” or  “ the  Gospel  ” or  “ the  plan  of  salvation  ” ; 
but  the  Anglican  position,  as  in  its  essence  political,  con- 
ceived and  represented  the  relations  of  God  and  man  as 
regulated  by  certain  fixed  and  persistent  institutions,  as  de- 
pendent for  their  happy  realization  on  a specific  polity  and 
certain  offxes,  rites,  and  instruments  variously  designated 
as  “Apostolical  Succession,”  “the  Priesthood,”  “the  Sacra- 
ments,” and  “ the  Church.”  The  Evangelical  position,  as 
mainly  doctrinal,  was  intellectual  and  individualistic ; the 
Anglican,  as  mainly  political,  was  historical  and  collective  : 
but  the  collectivism  of  the  one  was  less  universal  than  the 
individualism  of  the  other.  The  Evangelical  tended,  by 
his  distrust  of  mere  institutions,  to  a reluctant  Catholicity  ; 
the  Anglican,  by  so  emphasizing  special  offices,  persons, 
and  acts,  tended  to  as  reluctant  a particularism.  They  both 
agreed  in  their  evidential  method  or  process  of  proof — it 
was  an  appeal  to  actual  authorities  ; but  they  differed  in  the 
authorities  appealed  to — the  Evangelicals  were  Biblical,  the 
Anglicans  less  Biblical  than  Patristic.  In  handling  their 
authorities  they  were  alike  uncritical  and  unhistorical ; the 
authority  of  the  Evangelicals  was  a Bible  which  the  higher 
criticism  had  not  been  allowed  to  touch,  while  the  Anglicans, 
with  more  need  for  science,  and  a larger  yet  easier  field  for  its 
exercise,  were  in  their  use  of  the  F'athers  still  more  strenuously 
unscientific.  But  while  they  differed  as  to  their  authorities, 


THE  THEOLOGICAL  LIBRARY  AS  IT  WAS. 


II 


they  agreed  not  only  in  method  but  in  the  principle  which 
underlay  it — viz.,  what  the  authority  appealed  to  could  be 
made  to  prove  must  be  accepted  as  the  very  truth  of  God. 

But  the  character  of  the  theology  will  become  more 
apparent  if  we  survey  the  then  current  theological  literature. 
What  were  the  great  books,  and  what  their  special  questions 
and  method  ? Suppose  we  had  entered  while  the  century  was 
yet  in  the  thirties  a well-stocked  clerical  library — what  should 
we  have  found  ? Apologetics  would  be  represented  by  Butler 
and  Paley,  and  the  most  popular  of  the  Bridgewater  Treatises, 
especially  Chalmers  and  Whewell.  For  Theism  the  argument 
from  design  was  in  the  ascendant ; adaptation  was  as  charmed 
a word  then  as  evolution  is  now  ; everything  was  judged  by  its 
fitness  for  its  end — the  more  perfect  the  contrivance  the  more 
irrefragable  the  evidence.  Design  was  discovered  in  the 
organs  of  sense,  in  the  hand  of  man,  in  the  relation  between 
the  functions  of  digestion  and  the  chemistry  of  food,  in  all  the 
adaptations  of  man  to  nature  and  nature  to  man.  Christianity 
was  proved  to  be  divine,  partly,  by  its  being  an  instrument  or 
institution  so  excellently  adapted  to  the  improvement  of  man, 
especially  in  the  conditions  in  which  he  here  finds  himself ; and, 
partly,  by  the  testimony  of  its  first  preachers,  who  must  be 
believed  as  honest  men,  because  rogues  would  not  and  fools 
could  not  have  endured  the  sufferings  and  made  the  sacrifices 
they  did  for  the  sake  of  the  Gospel.  It  was  characteristic  that 
Butler’s  “ Analogy  ” was  more  esteemed  than  his  Sermons 
on  Human  Nature  an  argument  that  proved  natural  religion 
which  yet  never  was  a religion  of  nature,  to  be  more  heavily 
burdened  by  intellectual  and  moral  difficulties  when  taken  by 
itself  than  when  completed  and  crowned  by  revealed,  was 
much  better  adapted  to  the  age  than  one  built  on  the  supre- 
macy of  conscience.  The  latter  was  so  little  considered  that 
its  fundamental  inconsistency  with  the  doctrine  of  probability 
on  which  the  “ Analogy  ” is  based,  was  never  perceived.  But 
while  these  were  the  typical  apologetical  works  others  would 


12 


APOLOGETICS. 


not  be  absent.  Hume,  of  course,  as  a highly  respectable  and 
deeply  subtle  opponent,  would  be  there,  but  flanked  by  Reid’s 
reply  to  his  philosophy,  possibly  supported  and  supplemented 
by  James  Beattie’s  “Essay  on  Truth,”  and  by  Campbell’s 
answer  to  his  argument  against  miracles.  If  the  deistical 
controversy  was  exceptionally  well  represented,  then  Leland 
would  give  the  general  survey  of  the  field  and  the  men  who 
had  worked  in  it  ; Samuel  Clarke  would  by  “ the  high  priori 
road  ” demonstrate  the  being  and  attributes  of  God  ; Berkeley 
by  his  new  theory  of  knowledge  would  show  how  the  vanity 
of  the  new  materialism  could  be  exposed  and  spirit  made  the 
only  real  thing  in  the  universe  ; Sherlock  would  examine 
his  witnesses  to  prove  the  Resurrection  no  fraud  ; Conyers 
Middleton  would  prove  how  miracles  restricted  to  the  apos- 
tolic age  simplified  the  controversy,  and  strengthened  the 
apologist  by  relieving  him  from  the  cruel  necessity  of  either 
defending  ecclesiastical  miracles  or  sacrificing  to  their  mani- 
fold incredibilities  the  credibility  of  the  Biblical ; Warburton 
would  maintain  his  audacious  paradox,  and  argue  that  the 
legation  of  Moses  was  revealed  and  divine,  because,  while 
every  other  legislation  created,  ordered,  and  enforced  obedi- 
ence by  the  penalties  of  a life  to  come,  he  alone  never  invoked 
the  sanctions  of  a future  state  ; Jeremiah  Jones  would  tell 
how  the  canon  was  formed  and  ought  to  be  defended  ; Vv^hile 
Nathanael  Lardner’s  large  and  massive  scholarship  would 
bring  the  cumulative  evidence  of  antiquity  to  prove  the 
credibility  of  the  Gospel  history.  By  the  help  of  these  the 
theologian  could  do  his  apologetical  work,  and  marshal  his 
evidences  and  his  arguments  against  Voltaire  or  Bolingbroke, 
Collins  or  Tindal,  Hume  or  Gibbon,  Rousseau  or  Tom  Paine, 
who,  though  dead,  yet  lived  in  the  only  infidelity  then 
known. 

But  apologetics  could  not  stand  alone  ; the  Scriptures  must 
be  explained  as  well  as  defended.  So  Horne’s  “ Introduction  ” 
would  be  on  hand,  possibly  also  Michaelis’  as  Englished, 


BIBLICAL  EXEGESIS. 


13 


augmented,  and  amended  by  Marsh  ; and  if  his  “ Introduction  ” 
was  known,  so  also  would  be  his  “ Commentaries  on  the  Laws 
of  Moses,”  which  had  been  translated  by  a Scotch  minister, 
Alexander  Smith,  of  Chapel  of  Garioch.  Commentaries 
would  be  numerous  ; the  rich  collections  and  erudite  disser- 
tations of  the  Critici  Sacri  and  the  industrious  compilations 
of  the  Poli  Synopsis  Criticorum  would  be  at  command  ; while 
Grotius  and  Vitringa,  Coccejus,  Geierus,  Calovius,  and  Clericus, 
represented  the  older  scholasticism,  Ernesti  and  Gesenius, 
Rosenmuller  and  Eichhorn,  would  shed  the  newer  and  drier 
light  of  the  rationalism  that  was  just  ceasing  to  be.  If  the 
minister  was  very  venturesome,  he  might  have  acquainted 
himself  with  the  daring  critical  speculations  of  Bretschneider’s 
“ Probabilia,”  or  the  ingenious  theories  of  Schleiermacher, 
whose  essay  on  Luke  a bold  young  man  of  the  name  of  Thirl- 
wall  had  translated  and  published  in  1825,  though  even  he  had 
not  dared  to  avow  the  work.  If  the  library  was  a scholar’s,  he 
would,  of  course,  have  Brian  Walton  and  Mill,  and  would  turn 
hopefully  to  a new  critical  text  of  the  New  Testament  which 
a young  German,  Lachmann  by  name,  had  just  published  ; 
and  he  would  seek  help  from  the  great  patristic  commenta- 
tors, Origen,  Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  Theodoret,  Theophy- 
lact,  Chrysostom,  Augustine,  and  Jerome.  Or  if  it  was  a 
working  cleric’s,  he  would,  according  to  his  taste,  have  Whitby 
and  Hammond,  or  Patrick  and  Lowth,  Matthew  Henry,  or 
Thomas  Scott,  or  Adam  Clarke.  There  would,  of  course, 
be  the  classical  books  on  certain  special  subjects,  periods,  or 
persons.  Prideaux  “On  the  Connection  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,”  Lowth  on  Hebrew  Poetry  and  on  Isaiah, 
Horne  on  the  Psalms,  Luther  on  Galatians,  Brown  of  Wham- 
phray  on  Romans,  Owen  on  Hebrews,  Leighton  on  Peter. 
For  his  archaeology  and  philology  he  would  have  Lightfoot 
and  the  Buxtorfs,  as  well  as  such  fresh  and  unexpected  light 
as  had  just  been  supplied  by  the  lexicons  and  grammars  of 
Gesenius  and  Winer,  and  by  the  researches  of  Robinson,  while 


14 


THEOLOGY  SYSTEMATIC 


Josephus  would  be  a standing  authority,  and  the  sacred  text 
itself  the  most  certain  and  fruitful  of  all  his  sources. 

But  what  would  give  its  distinctive  character  to  the  library 
would  be  its  dogmatic  theology.  If  it  were  an  Anglican’s, 
his  books  would  have  much  to  say  about  the  Calvinistic  and 
Arminian  controversies,  the  divine  origin  or  the  excellent 
expediency  of  Episcopacy,  the  mind  of  the-  Fathers  and  the 
meaning  of  the  Creeds.  There  would  be  a curious  absence 
of  what  the  Lutheran  and  Reformed  Churches  understood  by 
“ systematic  theology  ” — great  systems,  in  their  sense,  being 
quite  unknown  in  the  English  Church.  The  book  that 
approaches  most  nearly  to  this  idea  could  not  but  be  there  ; 
it  bears  the  characteristic  name,  “ The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical 
Polity  ” — i.e.,  religion  is  considered  as  institutional,  a theory 
of  social  order,  a state  whose  laws  may  be  explicated  as 
they  must  be  enforced.  Beside  it,  almost  as  much  honoured, 
though  standing  on  a far  lower  plane,  would  be  Pearson 
“ On  the  Creed,”  and  with  him  would  be  Bull,  maintaining 
against  Jesuit  and  Socinian  alike  the  Nicene  orthodoxy  of  the 
ante-Nicene  Fathers,  and  Waterland,  with  all  the  apparatus 
of  a most  elaborate  and  well-equipped  scholasticism,  vindi- 
cating the  same  faith  against  the  Arians  of  his  own  Church. 
Burnet  “ On  the  Articles  ” would  find  a less  favoured  place ; 
while  Whitby  “On  the  Five  Points”  and  Tomline’s  “ Refu- 
tation of  Calvinism  ” would  be  memorials  of  what  was  even 
then  a burnt-out  controversy.  Of  course,  as  one  who  held 
the  faith  of  Ken,  he  would  hold  in  peculiar  reverence  the 
P'athers  who  lived  before  the  division  of  East  and  West,  and 
would  study  the  ancient  Church,  its  constitution  and  customs, 
by  the  help  of  Bingham.  If,  however,  the  library  belonged  to 
an  Evangelical  or  Presbyterian  or  Independent,  the  books 
would  dilTer  in  character  and  range  ; those  already  named 
would  almost  certainly  be  present,  but  amid  companions  that 
modified  their  speech.  The  burning  controversy  was  now 
the  Calvinistic  and  Socinian,  which  was  very  unlike  the  Arian 


AND  POLEMICAL. 


5 


controversy  of  the  days  of  Waterland  and  Clarke.  Then 
the  emphasis  fell  on  the  person  of  the  Redeemer,  but  now  it 
fell  on  His  work,  or  on  the  person  just  so  far  as  it  was  con- 
cerned in  the  work.  The  Evangelical  revival  was  largely 
responsible  for  the  change  ; its  watchword  had  been  “ Salva- 
tion,” and  it  had,  on  the  one  side,  magnified  conversion  as 
its  subjective  condition,  and  on  the  other  the  Atonement  as 
its  objective  ground.  Hence  came  the  inevitable  question — 
In  what  relation  did  Jesus  Christ,  and  especially  His  supreme 
act.  His  sacrifice  or  death,  stand  to  the  forgiveness  of  sins  ? 
What  was  the  precise  thing  it  was  meant  to  accomplish  ? 
And  what  must  it  be  to  accomplish  this  thing  ? The  Socinian 
said.  He  is  an  example.  He  saves  by  the  moral  influence  of  His 
life  and  death  ; the  Evangelical  said.  He  is  a sacrifice.  He  saves 
by  making  expiation  on  our  behalf  and  propitiating  Divine 
justice — ix.,  by  becoming  our  substitute  He  bears  our  punish- 
ment, and  so  enables  God  justly  to  forgive  our  sins.  The 
books  written  during  the  controversy  form  a library  in  them- 
selves. They  were,  in  form  at  least,  largely  Biblical.  While 
the  theories  of  inspiration  differed,  yet  on  both  sides  the 
authority  of  the  Scriptures  was  assumed,  the  Socinians, 
indeed,  venturing  in  their  own  interests  on  an  “ Improved 
Version  of  the  New  Testament,”  which  was  often  remarkable 
for  its  deft  defiance  of  grammar.  In  the  doctrinal  question 
their  champions  were  Priestley  and  Belsham,  Toulmin  and 
Kentish,  Lant  Carpenter  and  Yates,  who  skilfully  made  the 
worst  of  their  opponents’  case  and  the  best  of  their  own, 
especially  by  contrasting  the  grace  and  love  of  the  Gospel 
with  the  severities  of  Calvinism,  and  by  transferring  the 
rather  vindictive  jurisprudence  of  its  representatives  from  the 
abstract  forms  they  loved  to  the  concrete  which  they  wished 
to  avoid — i.e.,  from  impersonal  law  to  personal  God.  On  the 
Calvinistic  side  the  critics  and  apologists  were  a multitude. 
Horsley’s  charges  and  letters  against  Priestley  would  be  sure  of 
a place,  not  simply  because  of  their  racy  and  merciless  polemic. 


i6 


THE  SACRIFICE  OF  CHRIST, 


but  as  forming  the  link  that  connected  the  new  Socinian 
with  the  old  Arian  controversy.  In  one  of  the  most  striking 
pieces  of  autobiography  in  the  language,  Thomas  Scott,  of 
Aston  Sandford,  makes  his  own  experience  testify  to  the 
verity  of  his  beliefs,  and  certainly  his  “ Force  of  Truth  ” 
would  be  among  the  books  of  every  Evangelical.  There,  too, 
would  be  his  friend,  sturdy  and  stalwart  Andrew  Fuller,  with 
his  comparison  of  the  Calvinistic  and  Socinian  systems,  and 
his  vigorous  assault  on  the  new  Unitarians.  Archbishop 
Magee  would  be  in  evidence  with  his  two  discourses,  which 
were  brief,  and  his  notes,  which  were  voluminous,  in  proof 
of  the  scriptural  doctrines  of  the  Atonement  and  Sacrifice. 
Edward  Williams,  too,  would  unfold  his  doctrine  of  Sove- 
reignty, which  showed  that  God,  as  rector  or  ruler  of  the 
moral  universe,  was  bound  to  uphold  law,  and  could  uphold 
it  only  by  enforcing  its  sanctions,  though  He  would,  when 
His  mercy  required  it  and  the  common  good  allowed  it,  so 
modify  the  form  of  infliction  as  to  accept  the  sufferings  of 
an  innocent  Person  in  lieu  of  the  penalty  due  to  the  guilty. 
His  distinguished  pupil,  John  Pye  Smith,  was  certain  of  a 
place  for  his  works  on  the  “ Priesthood  of  Christ,”  which 
showed  how  well  he  had  learned  the  principles  and  method 
of  Williams,  and  on  the  “Scripture  Testimony  to  the  Mes- 
siah,” which  showed  that  he  had  studied  to  higher  purpose 
under  markers  then  much  feared  because  foreign.  Beside 
him  would  stand  the  lectures  and  treatises  of  George  Payne, 
Ralph  Wardlaw,  Joseph  Gilbert,  and  Thomas  Jenkyn,  who 
all  on  similar  principles,  though  with  various  modifications  of 
method  and  terms,  described,  explained,  and  defended  the 
theistic  grounds,  but  legal  nature,  necessity,  functions,  and 
ends,  of  the  Atonement.  The  relations  of  God  and  man  were 
expressed  and  explicated  through  the  categories  of  a special 
jurisprudence  ; theology  was,  as  it  were,  done  into  the 
language  of  the  bar  and  the  bench.  Yet  the  system 
was  not  irrational  ; indeed,  its  rationalism  was  its  most 


17 


{ 


BUT  NO  HISTORY  OF  HIM. 

remarkable  feature.  It  was  built  up  with  elaborate  care,  and 
exhibited  such  rare  architectonic  skill  that  one  could  not 
but  confess,  were  the  universe  a constitutional  state  which 
had  broken  out  in  rebellion,  and  God  its  monarch,  thus  and 
not  otherwise,  if  He  were  to  be  at  once  merciful  and  just, 
would  He  be  obliged  to  act.  Of  course,  the  principle  or 
essence  of  the  thought  might  be  correct ; it  was  the  forms 
or  categories  of  interpretation  that  were  inadequate. 

But  what  was  not  found  in  the  library  would  be  to  us 
more  remarkable  than  what  was,  especially  its  poverty  in 
books  dealing  with  Jesus  as  an  historical  person.  Books 
of  a kind  would  indeed  be  here  abundant.  Harmonies  of 
the  Gospels  bearing  great  names,  like  those  of  Gerson  and 
Jansen,  or  Chemnitz  and  Lightfoot,  or  Bengel  and  Greswell, 
and  exhibiting  extraordinary  feats  of  conciliatory  exegesis  ; 
defences  of  miracles,  and  especially  the  Resurrection,  against 
deists  and  deniers  of  every  sort ; poetic  presentations  of 
sacred  history,  and  especially  its  most  dramatic  events ; 
edifying  and  devotional  works,  calling  us  with  a Kempis 
or  Jeremy  Taylor  to  the  imitation  of  our  “ Great  Exemplar,” 
or  with  Bishop  Hall  to  the  “contemplation”  of  Him.  But 
hardly  a book  attempting  to  conceive  and  represent  Him 
just  as  He  appeared  in  history  would  have  been  found. 
Of  course,  Fleetwood  was  everywhere,  especially  in  the 
homes  of  the  people,  but  seldom  read,  scarcely  worth  reading, 
certainly  not  worth  a place  amid  the  books  of  a serious 
theologian.  If  Milner’s  “Church  History ’’was  taken  down, 
it  began  with  the  Apostles  ; if  Mosheim,  he  gave  only  an 
insignificant  chapter  to  Jesus  ; if  the  newer  Waddington, 
he  started  with  A.D.  6o.  It  was  indeed  a strange  and 
significant  thing  : so  much  speculation  about  Christ,  so  little 
earnest  inquiry  into  His  actual  mind  ; so  much  knowledge 
of  what  the  creeds  or  confessions,  the  liturgies  or  psalmodies, 
of  the  Church  said ; so  little  knowledge  of  the  historical 
person  or  construction  of  the  original  documents  as  sources. 


2 


1 8 THE  THEOLOGICAL  LIBRARY  AS  IT  IS. 

of  real  and  actual  history.  It  is  still  more  significant  that  the 
men  who  were  then  most  seriously  intent  on  the  revival  of 
religion  through  the  revival  of  the  Church,  were  the  very  men 
who  seemed  least  to  feel  or  conceive  the  need  of  the  return  to 
Christ.  They  were  possessed  of  the  passion  to  find  and  restore 
the  Church  of  the  Fathers,  and  to  the  Fathers  they  appealed 
for  direction  and  help  ; but  in  no  one  of  their  multitudinous 
tracts  or  treatises  is  there  any  suggestion  or  sign  that  Christ, 
as  the  Founder,  supplied  the  determinative  idea  of  His  own 
Church.  The  men  were  true  sons  of  their  generation,  and 
for  it  the  historical  sense,  especially  in  this  province,  was  not 
yet  born. 

§ III. — The  Recovery  of  the  Historical  Christ. 

But  what  a contrast  does  the  workshop  of  a living  theo- 
logian present  to  the  library  of  the  older  divine  ! Dogmatics 
and  apologetics  have  almost  disappeared  from  it,  and  in 
their  place  stand  books  on  almost  every  possible  question 
in  the  textual,  literary,  and  historical  criticism  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments.  Harmonies  have  almost  ceased  to 
be,  and  instead  we  have  discussions  as  to  the  sources, 
sequence,  dependence,  independence,  purpose,  dates,  of  the 
four  Gospels.  Lives  of  Christ  by  men  of  all  schools, 
tendencies,  churches,  abound,  each  using  some  more  or  less 
rigorous  critical  method.  Beside  these,  and  supplementary 
to  them,  are  histories  of  New  Testament  times,  which  show 
us  the  smaller  eddies  as  well  as  the  greater  movements,  and 
supply  both  the  background  and  the  light  and  shade  needed 
to  throw  the  central  Figure  into  true  perspective.  Then  we 
have  monographs  on  Jewish  and  heathen  teachers,  on  Hellen- 
istic and  Talmudic  beliefs,  on  Judaic  sects  and  Gentile  schools 
and  usages,  on  early  heresies  and  primitive  societies,  with 
the  result  that  the  age  of  Christ  and  His  apostles  is  ex- 
periencing such  a resurrection  as  Ezekiel  saw  in  his  valley 


REVIVIFICATION  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT. 


19 


of  vision.  Paul  is  studied  not  simply  as  the  pre-eminent 
dialectician  of  the  apostolic  period,  but  through  his  psychology, 
his  personal  experience,  his  antecedents,  discipline,  relations 
— in  a word,  as  a man  who  lived  among  living  men  ; and  in 
consequence  his  work  and  his  epistles  have  grown  full  of 
meanings  once  altogether  overlooked.  The  Gospels  are  no 
longer  studied  simply  in  relation  to  each  other,  but  also  in 
relation  to  the  other  literature  of  the  New  Testament  and 
the  thought  of  sub-apostolic  times,  and  so  have  helped  to 
make  us  conscious  of  the  forces  that  organized  and  built 
up  the  Christian  society.  The  Apocalypse  has  ceased  to 
be  read  and  interpreted  as  a mysterious  prophecy  which 
conceals  even  more  than  reveals  all  the  destinies  of  all  the 
empires  that  rule  the  Christian  centuries,  and  has  become  one 
of  our  most  significant  documents  for  the  interpretation  of 
the  mind  of  the  parties  within  the  primitive  Church.  The 
analytical  process  is  not  yet  complete,  and  the  synthetic  has 
hardly  well  begun  ; yet  enough  has  been  achieved  to  warrant 
us  in  saying  that  the  second  half  of  our  century  may  be 
described  as  the  period  when  the  history  of  the  New 
Testament  has,  through  its  literature,  been  recovered,  and 
in  this  history  by  far  the  greatest  result  is  the  recovery  of 
the  historical  Christ. 

We  are  speaking  meanwhile  only  of  a result  which  we  owe 
to  historical  criticism  ; we  are  not  as  yet  concerned  with  its 
religious  or  theological  import.  The  claim  does  not  for  the 
moment  transcend  the  sphere  of  historical  inquiry  and  know- 
ledge. It  is  neither  said  nor  meant  that  our  age  is  distinguished 
by  a deeper  reverence  or  purer  love  for  the  Redeemer,  or  even 
a stronger  faith  in  Him.  In  these  respects  we  might  claim 
pre-eminence  for  other  ages  than  our  own.  In  the  hymns  of 
the  early  and  mediaeval  Church,  of  the  Lutheran  and  Moravian 
Churches,  of  the  Evangelical  and  Anglican  revivals,  there  is 
a fine  unity  of  spirit,  due  to  all  possessing  the  same  simple 
yet  transcendent  devotion  to  the  person  of  the  Christ.  This 


20 


CHRIST  IN  SONG 


devotion  it  is  impossible  to  excel ; we  confess  our  sense  of 
its  truth,  its  intensity,  elevation,  humble  yet  audacious  sin- 
cerity, by  the  use  of  the  hymns  that  were  its  vehicle.  So 
true  is  the  faith  of  those  hymns  that  they  compel  all  Churches, 
even  the  most  proudly  exclusive,  to  forget  their  differences  and 
divisions,  and  in  the  high  act  and  article  of  worship  to  realize 
their  unity.  The  high  Anglican  praises  his  Saviour  in  the 
strains  of  Luther  and  Isaac  Watts,  Gerhardt  and  Doddridge  ; 
the  severe  Puritan  and  Independent  rejoices  in  the  sweet  and 
gracious  songs  of  Keble  and  Faber,  Newman  and  Lyte  ; the 
keen  and  rigid  Presbyterian  feels  his  soul  uplifted  as  well  by 
the  hymns  of  Bernard  and  Xavier,  Wordsworth  and  Mason 
Neale,  as  by  the  Psalms  of  David.  And  this  unity  in  praise 
and  worship  which  so  transcends  and  cancels  the  distinctions 
of  community  and  sect,  but  expresses  the  unity  of  the  faith 
and  fellowship  of  the  heart  in  the  Son  of  God.  In  the  regions 
of  the  higher  devotion  and  the  purer  love  all  differences  cease. 
And  as  in  worship  so  in  theology  ; the  greatest  of  the  older 
divines  were  those  who  most  laboured  to  do  honour  to  Christ. 
The  very  goal  of  all  their  thinking,  the  very  purpose  of  all 
their  systems,  was  to  exalt  His  name,  to  assist  and  vindicate 
His  supremacy  in  thought  and  over  His  Church.  Here  East 
and  West  are  agreed  ; Augustine  vies  with  Athanasius,  John 
of  Damascus  with  Anselm,  Luther  with  Loyola,  Calvin  with 
Bellarmine,  Howe  with  Hooker,  Rutherford  with  Milton.  In 
the  homage  of  the  intellect  to  Christ  no  Church  or  age  can 
claim  to  be  pre-eminent  ; here  there  has  been  unity,  an  almost 
passionate  agreement,  intensest  and  most  real  when  the  Church 
or  age  was  most  in  earnest.  The  statement,  then,  that  our  age 
excels  all  others  in  the  fulness,  objectivity,  and  accuracy  of  its 
knowledge  of  the  historical  Christ  must  not  be  construed  to 
mean  the  superiority  of  our  age  in  its  sense  of  dependence  on 
the  Redeemer  and  reverence  for  Him.  It  knows  Him  as  no 
other  age  has  done  as  He  lived  and  as  He  lives  in  history, 
a Being  who  looked  before  and  after,  within  the  limits  and 


AND  IN  THOUGHT. 


21 


under  the  conditions  of  time  and  space,  influenced  by 
what  preceded  Him,  determining  what  followed.  What 
the  theological  consequences  of  this  larger  and  more  ac- 
curate knowledge  may  be  is  more  than  any  one  can  tell  as 
yet.  To  deduce  or  indicate  some  of  these  is  the  purpose  of 
this  book. 

Our  discussion  will  fall  into  two  main  parts  : one  historical 
and  critical,  and  one  positive  and  constructive.  The  historical 
and  critical  will  deal  with  two  questions  : first,  the  causes  that 
have  so  often  made  theology,  in  the  very  process  of  interpret- 
ing Christ,  move  away  from  Him ; and,  secondly,  the  causes  that 
have  contributed  to  the  modern  return  to  Him.  The  positive 
and  constructive  will  also  be  concerned  with  two  questions  : 
first,  the  interpretation  of  Christ  given  in  the  Christian 
sources  ; and,  secondly,  the  theological  significance  of  Christ 
as  thus  interpreted. 


n, 


•f 


BOOK  I. 

HISTORICAL  AND  CRITICAL. 

DIV.  L—THE  LA  W OF  DEVELOPMENT  IN  THEOLOGY 
AND  THE  CHURCH 

DIV.  IL— HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  AND  THE  HISTORY 
OF  CHRIST. 


\ 


9-? 


’Ej/  apxii  6 A6yo^,  kuI  6 Aoyos  tt/jos  rbv  Qebv,  /cat  0eos  6 A070S. 
oCtos  ev  dpxv  Trpos  tov  Qtdv.  irdvra  di  avroO  kyevero,  Kai  x^P‘5  avroO 
iyivero  ov8e  8u  6 yeyovev.  ev  abrip  ^ojtj  ^v,  kuI  i]  fa>7j  ijv  to  (pQs  tCjv 
dvdpibwwv,  Kal  TO  0WS  ev  Trj  (tkotIo,  (paivei,  /cat  17  CFKOTia.  avTO  ou  KOLTika^ev. 

—John  i.  1-5. 

Quoci  initium  sancti  Evangelii,  cui  nomen  est  secundum  loannem, 
quidam  Platonicus,  sicut  a sancto  sene  Simpliciano,  qui  postea  Medio- 
lanensi  Ecclesise  praesedit  episcopus,  solebamus  audire,  aureis  literis 
conscribendum,  et  per  omnes  Ecclesias  in  locis  eminentissimis  propo- 
nendum  esse  dicebat. — Augustine,  “ De  Civ.  Dei,”  x.  29. 

Unicus  enim  natura  Dei  Filius,  propter  nos  misericordia  factus  est 
filius  hominis,  ut  nos  natura  filii  hominis,  filii  Dei  per  ilium  gratia 
fieremus.  Manens  quippe  ille  immutabilis,  naturam  nostram  in  qua 
nos  susciperet,  suscepit  a nobis;  et  tenax  divinitatis  suae,  nostrae 
infirmitatis  particeps  factus  est;  ut  nos  in  melius  commutati,  quod 
peccatores  mortalesque  sumus,  eius  immortalis  et  justi  participatione 
amittamus,  et  quod  in  natura  nostra  bonum  fecit,  inpletum  suramo 
bono  in  ejus  naturae  bonitate  servemus.  Sicut  enim  per  unum  hominem 
peccantem  in  hoc  tarn  grave  malum  devenimus;  ita  per  unum  hominem 
eundemque  Deum  justificantem  ad  illud  bonum  tarn  sublime  veniemus. 
— Augustine,  “De  Civ.  Dei,”  xxi.  15. 

Der  Sohn  kommt  von  dem  Vater  herunter  zu  uns  und  hanget  sich 
an  uns,  und,wir  hangen  wiederum  uns  an  ihn  und  kommen  durch  ihn 
zum  Vater.  Denn  darum  ist  er  Mensch  w'orden  und  geboren  von  der 
Jungfrauen  Maria,  dass  er  sich  sollt  in  uns  mengen,  sehen  und  horen 
lassen,  ja  auch  uns  also  zu  sich  ziehe  und  an  ihm  halte,  als  dazu  gesandt, 
dass  er  die,  so  an  ihn  glauben  wiirden,  hinauf  zoge  zum  Vater,  wie 
er  in  dem  Vater  ist. — Luther  on  John  xiv.  20. 

Die  Welt  ist  eine  Blume,  die  aus  Einem  Saamenkorn  ewig  hervor- 
geht. — Hegel,  “Geschichte  der  Philos.,”  iii.  615. 


DIVISION  I. 


THE  LAW  OF  DEVELOPMENT  IN  THEOLOGY 
AND  THE  CHURCH. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

§ I.— On  the  History  of  the  Doctrine. 

HE  term  and  idea  of  development  were  introduced 


Jl  formally  and  explicitly  into  English  theology  by 
Newman.  With  him,  indeed,  it  was  not  so  much  a scientific 
doctrine  as  a form  of  personal  apology,  exhibiting,  as  it  were, 
the  logic  of  his  conversion.  With  his  premisses  the  logic  was 
invincible,  but  its  significance  is  personal  and  biographical 
rather  than  general  and  historical.  His  thought  moved 
uneasily  between  two  poles,  both  of  which  he  owed  to  Butler, 
though  the  one  was  Butler’s  own,  the  other  Locke’s.  Butler's 
was  the  doctrine  of  conscience,  Locke’s  the  doctrine  of  pro- 
bability. Conscience  was  Butler’s  real  contribution  to  the 
philosophy  of  human  nature  ; probability  was  the  first  principle 
of  his  analogy,  or  special  apologetic  for  the  Christian  religion. 
The  two  positions  were  full  of  implicit  incompatibilities ; the 
supremacy  of  conscience  made  a constitutional  authority  the 
guide  of  life,  but,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  probability, 


26 


NEWMAN  : CONSCIENCE  AND  PROBABILITY 


the  guide  was  a sort  of  logical  calculus.  The  one  doctrine 
was  transcendental — i.e.^  conscience  meant  that  human  nature 
brought  with  it  and  had  imbedded  in  it  a law  for  the  govern- 
ance of  man  or  the  regulation  of  his  conduct ; but  the  other 
doctrine  was  empirical — man  had  by  balancing  probabilities 
to  discover  the  faith  he  was  to  hold,  and  so  the  spiritual  laws 
he  was  to  obey.  The  imperious  but  narrow  logic  of  Newman’s 
mind,  quickened  by  his  passionate  yet  intellectual  mysticism, 
forced  these  incompatibilities  into  sharp  antitheses.  The 
reason  could  only  deal  with  probabilities,  but  the  conscience 
possessed  supremacy  and  authority ; while  it  was  the  nature 
of  the  one  to  question  and  analyze  and  weigh,  it  was  the 
nature  of  the  other  to  reign  and  to  command.  Now,  religion 
was  associated  with  the  authoritative,  not  with  the  ratiocinative, 
faculty.  Conscience  was  the  source  of  natural  religion,  and 
its  supremacy  the  one  valid  authority ; and  so  the  super- 
session  of  natural  by  revealed  religion  meant  the  “ substitution 
of  the  voice  of  a lawgiver  for  the  voice  of  conscience.”  ^ 
The  intellect,  as  governed  by  the  law  of  probability,  was 
naturally  critical  of  authority,  and  had  to  be  beaten  down  and 
forced  under,  that  it  might  be  disciplined  and  filled  with 
religious  contents.  And  so  Newman  began  a quest  after 
“ the  invisible  Divine  Power  ” or  “ external  Authority  ” whose 
supremacy  was  “ the  essence  of  revealed  religion.”  This 
could  not  be  the  Scriptures,  for  they  were  a book  that  needed 
interpretation,  and  the  real  authority  was  the  interpreter 
rather  than  the  interpreted.  It  could  not  be  the  Anglican 
Church,  for  it  had  no  organ  through  which  to  speak  : its 
bishops  were  worse  than  dumb  ; their  voices  were  often  con- 
tradictory, oftener  without  authority,  and  too  frequently 
attuned  to  the  measures  of  a selfish  and  worldly  wisdom.  So 
he  was  forced  to  turn  to  the  time  when  there  was  neither 
Anglican  nor  Roman  nor  Greek  Church,  but  only  the  un- 
divided Church  of  East  and  West.  In  this  Church,  its  Fathers 
^“Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,”  p.  124  (2nd  ed.,  1846). 


HE  SEEKS  AUTHORITY  AND  FINDS  DEVELOPMENT.  2/ 

and  its  Councils,  he  found  the  authority  he  craved ; what 
was  then  always  and  everywhere  believed  by  all  was  the 
truth.  Skilful  and  dexterous  interpretation  made  the  theory 
work  awhile  ; but  though  the  conversion  of  a disputant  by 
his  opponents  is  the  rarest  of  events,  yet  where  they  fail 
the  logic  of  the  situation  may  succeed.  And  so  it  happened 
with  Newman.  The  primitive  Church  was  soon  seen  to  be 
anything  but  a united  Church  ; within  it  were  many  minds 
and  many  differences  of  doctrine  and  custom,  and  of  it 
no  living  Church  was  an  exact  reproduction  or  reflection. 
Compared  with  it,  the  Roman  was  different,  but  continuous ; 
while  the  Anglican  was  both  discontinuous  and  different. 
In  no  respect,  therefore,  could  the  Anglican  be  saved  or 
vindicated  through  the  Church  of  the  Fathers  ; but  in  two 
respects  the  Roman  could  be  vindicated — by  its  manifest 
historical  continuity,  and  by  a theory  of  development  which 
not  only  explained  the  differences,  but  turned  them  into 
proofs  of  the  Roman  claim.  This  theory  became,  then,  at 
once  the  justification  of  Newman’s  consistency,  the  condem- 
nation of  the  Church  he  forsook,  and  the  vindication  of  the 
Church  he  joined. 

To  sketch  the  history  of  the  theory  would  carry  us  far 
beyond  our  present  limits.  On  one  side  it  represented 
the  victory  of  Protestant  criticism,  and  confessed  that  the 
Catholicism,  of  Trent  was  not  the  Catholicism  of  the  ancient 
Church ; but,  on  the  other  side,  it  evaded  the  Protestant 
conclusion  by  construing  the  Church,  Roman  and  Catholic, 
as  a living  and  therefore  growing  body,  which  not  only 
had  the  right  to  defend  its  life  by  augmenting  or  deve- 
loping its  creed,  but  was  bound  on  due  occasion  to 
exercise  the  right.  The  earlier  form  of  the  theory  resulted 
from  the  controversies  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries.  Calvin,^  Flacius  and  the  other  Magdeburg 

^“Epistola  Nuncupatoria,”  “Inst.,”  pp.  18-25  (ed.  1536).  Calvin  here 
argues  that  the  Reformed  is  nearer  the  Fathers  than  the  Roman  faith, 


28 


DOCTRINE  PROTESTANT  IN  ORIGIN, 


centuriators,^  Chemnitz,^  Amesius,^  and  Daille,^  had  strenuously 
affirmed  what  Bellarmine  and  Baronius  as  strenuously  denied 
— that  the  new  Catholicism  was  not  the  old  Christianity  ; 
and  their  evidences  and  arguments  were  too  cogent  to  be 

which  exhibits  radical  and  revolutionary  additions  to  their  creed  and 
customs.  It  is  the  negation  rather  than  the  development  of  the  patristic 
theology.  Cf.  his  “ Supplex  Exhortatio  ad  Caesarem  Carolum  Quintum,” 
Opera,  vol.  vi.,  pp.  453-534  (in  “Corpus  Reformatorum”),  and  “Acta  Synodi 
Tridentinae.  Cum  Antidoto,”  ibid.^  vol.  vii.,  pp.  365-506  ; but  especially 
“ Inst.,”  bk.  iv.,  cc.  iv.-viii.  (ed.  1559). 

^ “ Ecclesias.  Historia,  integram  ecclesiae  Christi  ideam  complectens, 
congesta  per  aliquot  studiosos  et  pios  viros  in  urbe  Magdeb.”  (1559-1574). 
This  was  the  claim  of  Protestantism,  made  in  thirteen  folio  volumes,  to 
be  “ historical  Christianity.”  It  traced,  century  by  century,  the  fall  of 
Catholicism,  partly  by  ignorance  and  neglect,  partly  by  the  potency  of 
idolatry  or  sin  and  evil  custom,  from  the  purity  and  simplicity  of  the 
Apostolic  age  to  the  tyrannies  and  impurities  of  the  Mediaeval  Papacy. 
Yet  it  did  justice  to  the  saintliness  and  truth  that  had  never  ceased  to 
illumine  the  Church.  The  man  who  planned  and  carried  through  the 
enterprise  was  Matthias  Flacius,  often,  from  his  birthplace,  named  Illyricus. 
With  him  were  various  collaborateurs  : Wigand,  a man  most  indefatigable 
in  the  theological  polemics  of  his  most  polemical  age,  yet  whose  spirit  is 
well  expressed  in  his  epitaph — 

“ In  Christo  vixi,  morior  vivoque  Wigandus  : 

Do  Sordes  morti,  caetera  Christe  tibi”; 

Matthaeus  Judex,  who  died  before  the  work  had  far  advanced ; Basilius  Faber; 
Andreas  Corvinus,  Wigand’s  son-in-law  ; and  Thomas  Holzhuter.  To  it 
belongs  the  significance  of  being  the  first  serious  appeal  to  history  as  a whole, 
and  as  a process  of  change  and  enlargement.  It  was  in  reply  to  these 
“ centuriae  Satanae,”  that  had  advanced  “ e portis  inferis  in  Fcclesiae 
detrimentum,”  that  Baronius  wrote  his  “Annales  Fccles.”  (“  Gratiarum 
Actio  Ph.  Nereo,”  tom.  viii.,  p.  vii.) 

Fxamen  Decret.  Concil.  Trid.”  (1565-1573).  The  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  this  book  is  “ Nostram  antiquitatem  esse  Christum  et  Sacram 
Scripturam  ” (p.  670,  ed.  1641).  But  he  throughout  argues:  the  Fathers, 
so  far  as  representatives  of  the  true  and  pure  antiquity,  are  against  Rome 
— its  customs  and  dogmas  are  not  theirs.  His  arguments  are  derived, 
not  simply  from  Scripture,  but  also  “ex  orthodoxorum  Patrum  consensu.” 
Yet  the  Fathers  are  to  be  judged  by  Scripture,  not  Scripture  by  the 
Fathers  (cf.  pp.  477,  495,  503,  526,  726,  768).  For  they  all,  as  subject 
to  the  customs  and  pre-judgments  of  their  time,  erred  in  opinion  and  in 
interpretation  ; and  while  their  errors  were  to  be  forgiven,  they  were  not 
to  be  imitated  (cf.  pp.  285,  469,  480-482,  542,  543,  etc.). 

3 “ Bellarminus  Fnervatus,”  tom.  i.,  lib.  i.,  c.  vi.  (1628). 

^ “ Traite  de  I’Fmploi  des  Saintes  Peres  pour  le  jugement  des  differends 


BUT  ADAPTED  TO  CATHOLICISM. 


29 


ineffectual.  Petavius  ^ struck  out  a happier  answer  than 
Bellarmine.  He  carried  the  question  out  of  the  region 
where  there  was  difference  into  the  region  where  there  was 
agreement  between  the  Roman,  the  Reformed,  and  the 
Lutheran  Churches.  He  said,  in  effect : — on  such  vital 
matters  as  the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation,  the  ante-  and 

qui  sont  aujourd’hui  en  la  Religion”  (1632).  This  book  has  an  interesting 
history,  but  what  concerns  us  is  its  modern  spirit.  It  was  written  in  answer  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  plea, “We  have  antiquity  and  the  Fathers,”  and  argues ; — 
the  questions  of  the  Fathers  were  not  ours,  and  do  not  decide  our  con- 
troversies ; their  doctrine  was  not  uniform,  and  they  have  often  contradicted 
one  another  ; they  have  not  written  as* representatives  of  the  whole  Church, 
nor  have  they  ever  claimed  to  be  for  us  authorities  in  religion,  nor  are  they 
ever  used  as  such  save  for  offensive  or  defensive  purposes.  Every  Church 
differs  from  them,  and  vindicates,  as  well  as  exercises,  its  right  to  differ. 
Growth  everywhere  involves  change,  most  of  all  in  religion,  and  it  is  mere 
pretence,  discarded  wherever  inconvenient,  for  any  Church  to  say,  “ We 
follow  the  Fathers,” — since  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case  they  can  neither 
be  pure  nor  ultimate  authorities,  and  as  a matter  of  fact  in  many  funda- 
mental matters  are  not  treated,  nor  are  even  capable  of  being  treated,  as 
authorities  at  all. 

^ “ De  Theologicis  Dogmatibus,”  published  at  Paris,  1644-50.  It  was 
republished  with  additions,  mainly  from  the  polemical  tracts  of  Petavius 
himself  against  Grotius,  Salmasius,  and  the  Jansenists,  by  Clericus  under 
the  pseudonym  of  Theophilus  Alethinus  at  Antwerp,  1700;  and  again 
under  the  editorship  of  Father  Zacharia  at  Venice  in  1757.  A new  and 
very  sumptuous  edition  began  to  appear  at  Rome  in  1857.  The  book  is 
classical,  the  first  attempt  at  a scientific  history  of  dogmata,  and  is 
notable  as  suggesting  to  modern  theology  the  term  “ Dogmatics.”  He 
uses  dogmata  that  he  may  denote  Christian  ideas,  as  known  through 
the  Scriptures  and  tradition,  but  as  formulated  by  the  Church,  It  was 
a well  enough  understood  patristic  sense,  but  prior  to  its  modern  use 
there  were  instructive  differences  in  the  nomenclature  of  the  science  of 
interpretative  theology.  The  first  systematic  treatise  bore  the  significant 
name  Ilepi  dpx^v  ; scholasticism  began  by  the  use  of  Ltdri  Sententiarum — 
?>.,  sentences  from  the  Fathers  were  selected,  systematized,  and  subjected 
to  dialectical  elaboration  ; then,  as  the  schoolmen  became  more  indepen- 
dent of  the  Fathers  and  more  dependent  on  Aristotle,  their  systems  took 
the  name  Suf?im(B  Theologicce,  which  were  in  scheme  and  construction 
philosophical  and  deductive  rather  than  inductive  and  interpretative.  The 
Lutheran  theologians  used  the  name  Loci  Commwies — i.e.^  their  systems 
were  built  on  principles  or  commonplaces  derived,  not  from  the  Fathers, 
but  from  the  Scriptures.  The  Reformed  took  the  characteristic  title  histitu- 
iiones  ChristiancB  Religio7tis — they  conceived  their  systems  as  methods 


30 


CATHOLIC  DEVELOPMENTS 


the  post-Nicene  Fathers  did  not  agreed  Measured  by  the 
later  and  authoritative  standards  the  ante-Nicene  Fathers 
were  almost  all  on  one  point  or  another  heretical ; but 
they  were  not  heretics  because  the  Church  had  not  spoken, 
and  it  was  their  very  differences  and  inchoatenesses  that 
made  it  necessary  for  her  to  speak.  She  watched  and 
preserved  the  truth,  whose  pillar  and  ground  she  was,  by 
timely  definitions  and  developments.^  Jurieu,  from  the  Pro- 
testant side,  by  changing  the  emphasis,  so  applied  Petavius 
that  the  differences  between  the  Papal  and  the  Apostolic 
and  ancient  Christianity  were  from  developments  translated 
into  innovations,  and  a Church  that  came  into  its  creed 
by  fragments  and  in  stages  proved  by  the  very  terms 
of  its  being  to  be  no  infallible  and  immutable  Church.^ 

of  education  and  instruction  in  the  Christian  verities.  With  the  name  Theo- 
logica  Dog?7iata  came  in  the  notion  of  fixed  principles  variously  interpreted 
and  formulated,  therefore  with  a development  and  a history.  Protestant 
theologians  did  not  take  kindly  to  it,  though  it  was  used  by  Reinhart 
in  1659,  and  by  Buddaeus  in  1724;  yet  as  late  as  1780  Doederlein, 
“Inst.  Theoh,”  p.  192,  complained  “ theologiam  theoreticam  male  nostris 
temporibus  dici  coeptam  esse  dogmaticam.”  And  his  reason  was  : “ Nam 
theologia  dogmatica  propria  est,  quae  agit  de  placitis  et  opinionibus  theolo- 
gorum,"  But  this  did  not  suit  the  usage  of  Petavius.  Cf.  for  the  classical 
and  patristic  use  of  the  term  C.  L.  Nitzsch,  “ Sys.  der  Christ.  Lehre,” 
pp.  50-53  ; Baur,  “ Vorles  ub.  d.  Christ.  Dogmengesch.,”  i.  8 ff. 

' “ De  Theol.  Dog.,”  “ De  Trin.,”  lib.  i.,  cc.  iii.-viii.  He  holds  that  the  ante- 
Nicene  Fathers  spoke  in  certain  cases  “ Ariano  paene  more  ” ; and,  in  c.  v., 
§ 7,  names  Athenagoras,  Tatian,  Theophilus,  Tertullian,  and  Lactantius  as 
holding  that  the  Son  was  made  {^roductuni)  that  He  might  be  used  as  a 
kind  of  assistant  or  servant  (admmistrum)  ; while  others,  like  Origen,  held 
the  Father  superior  in  age,  dignity,  and  power  to  the  Word,  and,  although 
made  from  the  substance  of  the  Father,  yet  He  no  less  than  creatures 
had  had  a beginning.  In  c.  viii.,  § 2,  he  describes  Arius  as  a “germanum 
Platonicum,”  who  followed  the  dogma  of  those  ancient  writers,  “ qui 
nondum  patefacta  constitutaque  re  ad  eumdem  errorem  offenderunt.”  Cf. 
Bishop  Bull,  “ Defensio  Fidei  Nic.,”  Proem.,  §§  7,  8. 

^ “ De  Theol.  Dog.,”  Prolegomena,  c.  i.,  ii.  The  cautiones  he  appends  are 
very  instructive.  Cf.  “ De  Trin.,”  Praefatio,  and  the  Appendicula,  in  which 
the  editor  gives  an  attempt  at  an  Apologia  for  the  doctrine  of  his  author. 
The  boldness  of  Petavius  involved  him  in  serious  charges  of  dealings  with 
heresy ; his  doctrine  and  illustrations  exercised  great  influence  on  Newman. 

* “ Lettres  Pastorales  addressees  aux  Fideles  de  France,  qui  gemissent 


AND  PROTESTANT  VARIATIONS. 


31 


Catholic  doctrine  was  often  but  successful  heresy : “ The 
authors  of  heresies  and  superstitions  which  are  rejected  are 
indeed  loaded  with  infamy,  but  the  makers  of  those  that 
are  received  are  canonized  and  revered.”  Bossuet  did  his 
best  to  rid  Catholicism  of  a theory^  which  so  completely 
removed  the  basis  from  his  famous  argument  against  the 
Protestants.  That  argument,  so  far  as  it  was  constructive, 
rested  on  two  positive  principles — viz.,  “ que  la  foi  ne  varie 
pas  dans  la  vraie  Eglise  et  que  la  verite  venue  de  Dieu  a 
d’abord  sa  perfection  ” ^ ; but  the  doctrine  of  evolution  changed 
the  first  into  an  historical  untruth,  the  second  into  a philo- 
sophical error.  But  the  “Histoire”  as  a whole  is  only  a 
splendid  example  of  a polemic  successful  by  its  very  want  of 
truth  and  reasonableness.  It  moves  upon  the  same  level  as 
the  performances  of  those  modern  writers  who  imagine  that 

sous  la  Captivite  de  Babylon  ” (2nd  ed.,  1686).  See  in  particular  letters 
ii.,  iii.,  V.,  vi,  Bossuet  had  affirmed  “ I’impossibilite  des  changemens 
insen  sibles,”  Jurieu  argues — the  history  of  the  immutable  Church  of  Rome 
has  been  a succession  of  variations,  insensibly  introduced,  but  slowly 
working  out  a radical  revolution.  These  letters  are  pathetic  reading ; 
fugitive  leaflets  addressed  to  the  dispersed  and  persecuted  Churches  of 
France,  containing  now  learned  discussions  in  history  and  doctrine,  now 
impassioned  exhortations  to  steadfastness,  and  again  sad  and  touching 
narratives  of  the  sufferings  and  heroisms  of  the  proscribed.  It  is  a signal 
example  of  the  waywardness  of  literary  fame ; it  is  a more  learned,  more 
modern,  more  scientific  book  than  Bossuet’s,  yet  the  militant  bishop  has 
received  honours  which  were  denied  to  his  antagonist.  Jurieu  went  to  the 
root  of  the  matter,  formulated  a doctrine  of  development,  held  that  the 
Church  grew  in  mind,  did  not  understand  its  own  faith  and  meaning  at 
first,  learned  to  understand  onl}’-  by  degrees  ; illustrated  his  contention 
from  the  Fathers  and  from  history,  and  troubled  the  equanimity  of  Monsieur 
de  Meaux  by  roundly  affirming  that  the  man  who  denied  it  must  have  a 
brow  of  brass,  or  be  of  a crass  and  surprising  ignorance.  The  letters  were 
translated  into  English  and  published,  with  a dedication  to  the  Prince  of 
Orange,  in  1689. 

^ See  the  Avertissements  to  the  “ Histoire  des  Variations.”  They  are 
instructive  reading,  full  of  the  arts  of  the  disputant  who  to  evade  the  issue 
starts  a false  charge  against  his  opponent.  They  are  in  extent  equal  to 
a third  of  the  “ Histoire,”  and  showed  how  thoroughly  the  Aigle  de  Meaux 
had  been  winged. 

* “ Hist,  des  Variations,”  vol.  iii.,  Avert.,  p.  5 (ed.  1845). 


32 


NEWMAN’S  THEORY. 


to  exhibit  the  differences  of  critics  is  to  refute  criticism.  The 
most  perfect  work  of  this  type  must  always  remain  the  least 
significant.  Such  is  Bossuet’s,  and  its  insignificance  is  seen 
in  this — that  as  the  ideas  of  order  and  progress  in  history 
became  explicit  in  philosophy,  the  development  he  so  disliked 
reappeared  in  a new  and  more  scientific  shape  in  theology. 
It  took  a twofold  form  : the  French,  which  was  more  social 
and  political ; and  the  German,  which  was  more  philosophical 
and  theological, — the  former,  whose  main  exponent  was  Joseph 
de  Maistre,  being  due  to  the  speculative  tendencies  which 
culminated  in  Comte  ; the  latter,  which  had  in  Moehler  its 
most  brilliant  representative,^  exhibits  the  combined  influence 
of  Hegel  and  Schleiermacher.  But  Newman’s  theory,  though 
its  real  affinities  were  with  Petavius  rather  than  de  Maistre 
or  Moehler,  was  yet  distinctively  his  own,  explicable  through 
his  own  history,  the  peculiar  product  of  his  experience,  the 
logical  issue  of  the  position  he  had  years  before  assumed. 
In  him,  therefore,  it  is  too  much  a matter  of  personal 
development  to  stand  in  need  of  explanation  from  without. 

What,  then,  was  Newman’s  theory  of  development?  He 
described  it  as  “ an  hypothesis  to  account  for  a difficulty  ” ^ — 
viz.,  the  procession  or  evolution  of  Catholicism  from  what 
was  in  many  respects  so  radically  unlike  it,  as  to  be  its 
very  opposite,  if  not  contradiction — primitive  Christianity.  It 
“ came  into  the  world  as  an  idea  rather  than  an  institution, 
and  has  had  to  wrap  itself  in  clothing  and  fit  itself  with 
armour  of  its  own  providing,  and  to  form  the  instruments 
and  methods  of  its  prosperity  and  warfare.”^  The  process 
by  which  it  has  done  this  is  called  “ development,”  “ being 
the  germination,  growth,  and  perfection  of  some  living,  that 

1 “ Symbolik,”  § 40.  Cf.  Perrone,  “ Praelect.  Theol.,”  tom.  ii.,  pp.  165,  166. 

* “Development  of  Doctrine,”  p.  27. 

® Ibid.,  p.  1 16.  This  notion  Newman  owed  to  Guizot,  but  he  failed  to 
see  how  completely  it  bore  the  features  of  Guizot’s  Protestanism.  The 
primary  and  essential  thing  in  Christianity  was  to  Newman  the  institution, 
not  the  idea  ; but  to  Guizot,  the  idea,  not  the  institution. 


TESTS  OF  TRUE  DEVELOPMENT. 


33 


is,  influential,  truth,  or  apparent  truth,  in  the  minds  of  men 
during  a sufficient  period.  And  it  has  this  necessary  charac- 
teristic— that,  since  its  province  is  the  busy  scene  of  human 
life,  it  cannot  develop  at  all,  except  either  by  destroying, 
or  modifying  and  incorporating  with  itself,  existing  modes 
of  thinking  and  acting.”^  In  antithesis  to  development 
stands  “ corruption,”  which  is  defined  as  “ that  state  of  develop- 
ment which  undoes  its  previous  advances,”  “ a process  ending 
in  dissolution  of  the  body  of  thought  and  usage  which  was 
bound  up,  as  it  were,  in  one  system,”  “ the  destruction  of 
the  norm  or  type.”  ^ The  “ tests  ” which  distinguish  “ true 
development  ” from  corruption  are  seven — “ the  preservation  of 
the  Idea,”  “ continuity  of  principles,”  “ power  of  assimilation,” 
“ early  anticipation,”  “ logical  sequence,”  “ preservative  addi- 
tions,” and  “ chronic  continuance.”  ^ This  is  an  impressive 
apparatus  for  the  determination  of  true  developments  from 
false,  but  the  moment  we  attempt  to  apply  the  theory  to 
history  we  are  pulled  up  with  a sudden  shock.  For  it  turns 
out  to  be  a theory  not  for  historical  use,  but  for  polemical 
or  apologetical  purposes.  The  developments  are  to  proceed 
under  the  eye  of  “ an  external  authority,”  ^ which  is  to  be  the 
only  and  infallible  judge  as  to  whether  they  are  true  or  false. 
But  this  remarkable  provision  calls  for  two  remarks  : first, 
“ infallibility  ” is  not  an  “ idea,”  but  a very  definite  “ institu- 
tion,” and  so  hardly  conforms  to  the  terms  under  which 
Christianity  was  said  to  have  “ come  into  the  world  ” ; and, 
secondly,  to  exempt  “ the  infallibility  of  the  Church  ” from 
the  law  of  development  is  to  withdraw  from  us  the  most 
flagrant  example  of  its  operation.  If  anything  has  a history 
which  exhibits  growth,  it  is  this  doctrine ; to  make  one 
development  the  judge  of  the  right  or  wrong  of  all  the  rest, 
is  to  mock  us  by  refusing  to  enforce  at  the  most  critical  point 

^ “ Development  of  Doctrine,”  p.  37. 

* Ibid.^  pp.  62,  63. 

* Ibid.^  64  ff. 

^ Ibid.^  p.  117 : cf.  chap,  ii.,  § 2. 


34  DEVELOPMENT  SCIENTIFIC  AND  PHILOSOPHICAL 


the  law  which  has  been  so  solemnly  enacted.  This  may  be 
expediency,  but  it  is  not  justice  ; and  injustice  in  history  is  no 
service  to  the  cause  of  truth. 

§ II. — The  Idea  of  Development. 

The  theory  of  development  as  formulated  and  applied  by 
Newman  had  three  great  defects  : it  was  logical  and  abstract, 
not  biological  and  historical  or  real;  its  starting-point  was 
too  late,  a picture  of  the  created  society  rather  than  of  the 
creative  personality  ; and  its  end  was  a mere  fraction  or  section 
of  the  collective  organism  isolated  from  all  the  rest,  and 
invested  with  functions  whose  origin  evolution  could  well 
have  explained,  but  was  not  allowed  to  touch.  These  defects 
indicate  the  lines  our  exposition  of  the  positive  doctrine  will 
follow. 

What  does  development  mean  ? The  term  meets  us  in 
all  sciences  and  all  branches  of  inquiry  ; it  denotes  an  idea 
that  is  in  the  air,  working,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  in  all 
minds.  Darwin  did  not  discover  it,  nor  was  it  first  formulated 
by  Spencer  ; but  it  is  as  old  as  philosophy,  and  has  been 
more  or  less  implicit  in  the  methods  of  all  great  inquirers. 
What  is  distinctive  of  to-day  is  our  more  conscious  or  common 
use  of  it,  our  clearer  sense  of  the  problems  it  sets  us,  our 
greater  mastery  of  the  factors  necessary  to  their  solution, 
and  distincter  conception  of  the  limits  within  which  we  and 
our  problems  move.  Development  may  be  defined  as  at  once 
a subjective  method  and  an  objective  process, — as  a method 
it  seeks  to  conceive  and  explain  a being  or  thing  through  its 
history  ; as  a process  it  denotes  the  mode  in  which  the  being 
or  thing  becomes  as  a mode  of  progressive  yet  natural  change 
worked  by  two  sets  of  factors,  the  inner  and  outer,  or  or- 
ganism and  environment.  In  each  branch  of  study  it  assumes 
a form  appropriate  to  the  matter  which  is  handled : in 
philosophy  it  becomes  either,  subjectively,  an  inquiry  into  the 


OR  BIOLOGICAL  AND  LOGICAL. 


35 


process  by  which  man  comes  by  his  knowledge  or  grows  into 
the  intelligence  he  is,  or,  objectively,  a dialectical  explication  of 
the  Idea,  the  Cause,  or  Force  which  unfolds  or  is  unfolded  into 
the  system  whieh  we  name  “ the  universe  ” or  “ the  known  ” or 
“ the  manifold  of  experience  ” ; in  science  it  is  in  its  subjective 
sense  the  method  which  seeks  in  the  immanent  and  correlated 
forees  of  nature  a reason  for  all  the  changes  and  variations 
which  natural  things  undergo — in  its  objective  sense  it  is  the 
process  by  which  out  of  old  forms  or  species  new  ones  arise, 
organs  being  modified,  lost,  recovered,  or  developed  in  the 
struggle  for  existence  ; in  history  it  describes  the  method 
which  studies  beliefs,  customs,  institutions,  and  events  through 
the  factors  of  their  origin  and  in  their  reciprocal  and  corre- 
lated being,  and  the  process  by.  which  out  of  the  simpler 
the  more  complex  societies,  states,  and  religions  emerge. 
But  the  distinctive  element  in  all  the  senses  may  be  stated 
thus  : in  development  the  thing  is  studied  as  it  grows  and 
where  it  grows,  and  through  the  causes  and  conditions  of  its 
growth,  in  order  to  the  truer  knowledge  alike  of  its  speeial 
forms  and  of  the  forces  through  whose  operation  they  are. 

If  this  is  an  approximately  correct  description  of  develop- 
ment, then  it  must,  from  its  very  nature,  so  far  as  concerned 
with  real  persons  or  organisms,  be  biologieal — 2>.,  it  must 
study  life  as  living,  as  lived,  and  as  perpetuating  life.  It 
cannot  be  merely  logieal — Le.,  proceed  as  if  nature  could  be 
reduced,  as  it  were,  to  the  forms  of  the  syllogism,  or  stated 
in  its  terms.  The  distinetion  between  logical  and  biological 
development  may  be  represented  thus : the  one  is  evolution 
conceived  as  an  immanent  process,  and  proceeding  either 
without  any  environment  or  independently  of  any  formative 
energies  active  within  it ; but  the  other  is  evolution  exhibited 
in  aa  organism  which  lives  within  a living  world,  affected  by 
all  its  forces,  and  sensitive  to  its  every  change.  In  the  field 
of  history  the  logical  is  simply  an  abstract  deductive  process 
stated  and  conducted  in  concrete  or  historical  terms — i.e.^  it 


36  NEWMAN’S  DEVELOPMENT  LOGICAL. 

assumes  principles  and  reasons  to  conclusions  that  history 
may  be  used  to  illustrate,  but  cannot  be  allowed  to  decide  or 
to  determine.  But  the  biological  or  scientific  is  essentially 
concrete  and  inductive  : it  keeps  its  feet  on  reality  and 

studies  things  in  their  relations  ; begins  to  observe  the 
organism  or  new  form  at  the  earliest  possible  point  ; carefully 
analyzes  and  describes  the  various  environments  into  which 
it  enters,  notes  how  it  is  modified  by  each  and  modifies  each  ; 
seeks  to  discover  whether  the  great  factors  of  change  are 
inner  or  outer  ; and  accurately  measures  and  registers  at  every 
definite  stage  the  degree  and  path  of  change.  Logical 
development  is  a simple  process,  but  biological  is  most 
complex  : the  former  is  selective,  defines  what  it  wants  to 
prove,  and  fixes  the  conditions  and  lines  of  proof ; but  the 
latter  is  comprehensive,  finds  in  the  facts  and  phenomena 
before  it  what  has  to  be  explained,  and  attempts,  by  following 
their  history,  to  find  the  explanation. 

Now,  Newman’s  theory  revealed  its  essentially  logical  and 
dialectical  character  in  this — it  was  an  argument  which  used 
historical  formulae  for  the  maintenance  of  a given  thesis,  not 
for  the  interpretation  of  history.  He  took  what  he  was 
pleased  to  call  the  Church  out  of  the  world  in  which  it  lived 
and  through  which  it  was  organized — so  declining  to  study 
these  in  their  correlation  and  reciprocal  action  ; and  he  did 
not  study  either  the  Christ  who  created  the  society,  or  the 
society  as  it  was  created  by  Christ  He  indeed  elucidated 
his  theory  by  historical  illustrations  ; but  though  the  illustra- 
tions were  historical,  they  did  not  constitute  history  ; they  had 
all  the  insignificance  of  texts  isolated  for  special  polemical 
purposes  from  their  context.  In  human  as  in  natural  history 
the  action  of  the  environment  is  as  real  as  the  action  of  the 
organism.  They  may  differ  as  regards  function  and  quality, 
but  they  agree  in  being  alike  efficient  as  factors  of  change. 
The  organism  is  creative,  the  seat  and  source  of  life  ; but  the 
environment  is  formative,  determines  the  shape  which  the  life 


HISTORICAL  DEVELOPMENT  BIOLOGICAL. 


37 


assumes.  Without  the  organism  there  would  be  no  life,  no 
victorious  energies,  no  being  that  struggles  to  be  more 
and  more  ; without  the  environment  there  would  be  no  arena 
that  at  once  exercises  and  disciplines  the  energies,  no  field 
full  of  forces  that  must  be  now  resisted  and  now  assimilated. 
This  mutual  being  and  correlated  activity  of  organism  and 
environment  is  but  the  form  under  which,  as  regards  the 
question  specifically  before  us,  we  express  this  fundamental 
principle  : — the  Church,  so  far  as  it  exists  in  all  or  in  any 
of  its  organized  forms,  lives  within  the  world,  subject  to  the 
laws  which  govern  all  related  being.  Its  history  is  a section 
of  universal  history,  in  the  proper  sense  as  secular  as  the 
history  of  any  empire  or  state.  It  belongs  to  time,  condi- 
tions and  is  conditioned  by  the  agencies  active  within 
it,  is  inseparable  from  the  other  fields  of  human  activity, 
moral  and  social,  individual  and  collective.  The  history  of 
belief,  of  custom,  of  institutions,  of  political  action  and 
change,  of  industry  and  policy,  of  personal  morals  and 
international  relations,  cannot  be  written  apart  from  the 
history  of  the.  Church,  nor  its  history  apart  from  theirs ; 
at  every  fundamental  and  significant  point  the  one  shades 
into  the  other.  And  this  interpenetration  is  independent 
of  any  theory  as  to  the  constitution  of  the  Church,  or  its 
relations  to  the  State  ; it  is  as  complete  on  the  Presbyterian 
as  on  the  Papal,  on  the  Congregational  as  on  the  Anglican 
theory,  and  is  as  little  escaped  by  a voluntary  as  by  an 
Erastian  Church.  But  if  every  Church  must  so  live  in  the 
world  as  to  be  a part  of  its  collective  being,  then  it  must 
always  be  construed  in  and  through  the  place  and  time  in 
which  it  lives.  Apart  from  these  it  can  as  little  be  ex- 
plained or  understood  as  can  an  organism  apart  from  nature 
and  its  order.  In  both  cases  there  must  be  the  co-ordination 
of  the  living  being  and  its  home  in  order  to  any  scientific 
theory  of  development 


38  THE  CHURCH  AS  SUBJECT  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 


§ III. — Development  in  the  Church. 

Now,  in  the  field  of  inquiry  which  concerns  us,  what  has 
been  termed  the  organism  is  not  the  Church,  but  the  historical 
Christ — not  the  created  society,  but  the  creative  Personality. 
What  He  involved  will  be  seen  by-and-by.  What  we  have 
meanwhile  to  note  is  this  : He  entered  into  a double  environ- 
ment— the  society  He  created,  and  the  world  within  which 
it  lived.  He  founded  the  society,  and  the  society  was  bound 
to  interpret  Him  ; indeed,  it  was  only  as  He  could  be  made 
to  live  explicated  and  reasonable  to  its  intellect  that  He 
could  command  its  conscience  or  abide  in  its  heart.  But 
the  interpretation  could  not  be  simply  in  the  terms  He 
Himself  supplied  ; to  have  secured  this  the  world  as  well 
as  the  society  would  have  had  to  be  made  wholly  new. 
The  inherited  experiences  and  instincts  of  centuries  could 
not  be  dissolved  and  discharged  by  an  act  of  faith  or  by 
a simple  change  of  associations.  The  men  who  entered  the 
Church  did  not  cease  to  be  Jews  or  Greeks  or  Romans  ; 
though  their  spirit  and  temper  were  changed,  yet  their 
faculties,  activities,  modes  and  instruments  of  thought,  re- 
mained the  same.  Nothing  is  so  certain  or  so  evident  as 
the  activity  of  racial  idiosyncrasies  and  the  prevalence  of 
local  and  provincial  varieties  within  the  ancient  Church. 
These  differences  affected  doctrine,  polity,  worship,  morals — 
in  a word,  the  whole  field  of  religion.  Judaism  was  most 
varied,  a thing  of  many  schools  and  types ; there  was  a 
Judaism  of  the  Temple  and  of  the  synagogue,  of  the  desert 
and  of  the  mart,  of  the  rabbinical  school  and  of  the  ascetic’s 
cell ; there  was  a Sadducaic,  Pharisaic,  and  an  Essenic  Judaism 
— a Judaism  of  Judsea  and  Galilee,  of  Jerusalem  and  Alexan- 
dria, of  Italy  and  Asia  Minor.  And  traces  of  all  the  rich 
varieties  can  be  found  in  ancient  Christian  literature,  in  the 
history  of  the  Church  and  the  sects.  And  Hellenism  was  as 


THE  CHURCH  AND  ITS  ENVIRONMENTS.  39 

varied  ; the  local  cults  were  an  innumerable  multitude  ; the 
intellectual  tendencies,  and  as  a consequence  the  types  of 
philosophical  thought,  differed  almost  as  much  ; the  schools 
of  Athens  and  Alexandria,  of  Antioch  and  Tarsus,  were  all 
as  distinct  and  dissimilar  as  were  their  respective  races  and 
histories.  And  in  the  West  paganism  was  no  less  varied  ; 
North  Africa  and  Gaul,  Spain  and  Italy,  alike  lived  under 
Rome,  yet  in  religion  each  went  its  own  way,  retained  its 
ancient  worship,  but  did  not  scruple  to  add  new  to  its 
ancient  deities.  And  these  local  difTerences  affected  the  local 
Churches.  They  were  first  organized  on  the  lines  of  municipal 
and  provincial  or  territorial  differences,  and  then  on  the  lines 
of  imperial  and  Roman  policy.  The  episcopal  constitution 
did  not  rise  all  at  once,  nor,  when  it  had  risen,  did  it  move 
altogether  with  equal  step  in  all  places.  In  some  localities  it 
sprang  into  sudden  being  ; in  others  the  old  congregational 
and  presbyterial  simplicity  lingered  on.  Ancient  customs 
persisted  even  though  the  religion  changed  ; and  the  longest 
struggle  Rome  had — a struggle  in  which  it  has  not  been  even 
yet  completely  successful — was  against  the  old  local  cults  con- 
tinued in  the  local  Churches.  But  even  more  persistent  were 
the  old  intellectual  tendencies.  There  is  as  much  ancient 
philosophy  in  Justin  Martyr  as  in  Marcus  Aurelius,  in 
Origen  as  in  Celsus.  The  literary  spirit  of  Alexandria,  eclectic 
yet  idealist  in  philosophy  and  allegorical  in  interpretation, 
is  as  evident  and  active  in  Clement  as  in  Philo,  in  the  Cate- 
chetical School  as  in  the  New  Academy.  The  history  of  Neo- 
Platonism  is  Christian  as  well  as  pagan  ; it  had  almost  as 
much  to  do  with  the  formation  of  Athanasius  and  Augustine 
as  of  Plotinus  and  Porphyry.  If  Tertullian  had  not  been  a 
jurist,  his  theology  would  not  have  been  what  it  is,  especially 
as  regards  those  very  elements  and  terms  by  which  it  has 
most  powerfully  affected  the  development  of  dogma.  His 
Greek  mind  and  training  make  it  impossible  that  Chrysostom 
should  ever  have  written  the  Anti-Pelagian  Treatises,  while 


40  THE  ENVIRONMENT  AFFECTS  THE  ORGANISM 

they  are  as  full  as  they  well  could  be  of  the  intellectual 
principles  and  tendencies  that  had  once  made  Augustine  a 
Manichean.  The  causes  and  conditions  that  so  helped  to 
shape  the  Fathers  helped  no  less  to  form  the  Church  whose 
mind  they  made  and  expressed.  Change  their  philosophy, 
and  their  theology  would  not  have  been  what  it  was.  With- 
out Aristotle  in  the  Middle  Ages  we  should  not  have  had 
scholasticism,  at  least  not  in  the  distinctive  form  it  now 
possesses  ; and  without  ancient  philosophy  all  the  many  types 
and  varieties  of  patristic  and  scholastic  theology  would  be 
different  from  what  they  are.  If,  therefore,  the  men  who  made 
the  thought  and  formulated  the  faith  of  the  Church  have  been 
so  powerfully  affected  by  external  forces,  it  is  evident  that  its 
development  cannot  be  dealt  with  as  if  it  had  been  governed 
entirely  from  within.  The  internal  were  indeed  the  creative 
forces,  but  the  external  were  factors  of  form  and  of  formal 
change. 

This  argument,  so  far  as  it  has  proceeded,  must  not  be 
construed  to  mean  that  the  action  of  the  environment  was 
either  illicit  or  unnecessary.  It  had,  quite  as  much  as  the 
organism,  a place  and  function  in  the  order  of  Providence. 
If  there  had  been  no  creative  Person  there  could  have  been 
no  society  ; if  no  society,  conscious  of  being  a creation  and 
with  faith  in  its  Creator,  there  could  have  been  no  reason 
for  the  interpretation  of  Him  ; if  no  world  with  its  antece- 
dent history,  there  could  have  been  no  interpretative  faculty, 
method,  or  means.  This  does  not  in  any  way  question 
the  necessity  of  metaphysics  or  philosophies,  which  exist 
simply  because  man  is  man,  and  he  must  always  ask  a reason 
for  the  being  of  himself  and  his  universe.  And  the  dogmata 
of  a Church  are  but  what  may  be  described  as  its  philosophy 
of  its  Founder  or  of  its  own  being,  and  as  such  necessary  to 
it  if  it  would  have  a justified  or  rational  existence.  Nor  is 
there  any  question  raised  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  using  the 
terms  philosophy  had  elaborated  and  the  methods  it  had 


AND  IS  A FACTOR  OF  CHANGE. 


41 


followed  in  its  quest  after  truth,  nay,  such  use  had  the  right 
which  belongs  to  simple  necessity.  The  past  did  not  accu- 
mulate its  riches  in  vain  : they  were  made  to  be  used,  not 
to  be  lost.  The  philosophy  of  Greece  had  a divine  function 
in  the  world  as  well  as  the  law  of  the  Hebrews,  and  its 
art  and  polity  had  a mission  as  high  and  as  real  as  its 
philosophy.  The  mere  fact,  therefore,  that  religious  customs, 
or  social  institutions,  or  doctrinal  forms,  or  even  doctrines 
themselves  have  been  borrowed  by  the  Church,  or  assimilated 
and  incorporated  from  without,  does  not  condemn  them, — 
if  it  did,  what  would  survive  ? But  it  does  this — it  helps  us 
to  see  what  they  are  by  showing  how  they  came  to  be.  The 
natural  history  of  an  organism  or  an  institution  is  its  ex- 
planation, not  its  condemnation  ; if  it  cannot  bear  to  be 
explained,  it  wants  the  most  rudimentary  of  all  rights  to 
being  and  to  belief.  And  here,  while  the  formal  factor  is 
found  in  the  environment,  the  material  factor  must  be  sought 
in  the  organism,  and  the  truth  of  the  one  must  be  tested  by 
its  adequacy  as  a vehicle  or  mode  of  expression  for  the  other. 
Christ  remains  the  regulative  as  He  was  the  originating 
mind  ; He  is,  as  it  were,  the  eternal  norm,  the  law  by  which 
the  spirit,  offices,  institutions,  of  the  Church  must  be  measured 
and  judged.  It  cannot  escape  from  Him,  or  make  Him  after 
any  one  of  its  own  changeful  moods  ; for  the  literature  which 
describes  His  history  has  made  His  Presence  universal 
and  immortal.  It  is  as  if  the  ideals  of  the  creative  mind 
stood  disclosed  for  comparison  with  the  realities  of  the 
creation.  Supremacy  and  permanence  then  belong  to  Him 
alone  ; the  determinations  of  every  man  or  council  or  age 
have  a merely  local  and  temporal  character,  and  the  earlier 
even  more  than  the  later.  For  Christ  must  be  formed  within 
that  He  may  be  read  and  articulated  without,  but  the  growth 
into  His  spirit  has  been  a matter  of  centuries  and  proceeds 
but  slowly  even  yet.  The  literature  of  to-day  is  worthier  of 
Him  than  the  literature  of  the  second  or  third  century  ; the 


42 


CHRIST  EQUALLY  FOR  ALL  CHURCHES 


religious  consciousness  has  fewer  pagan  and  more  Christian 
elements  now  than  it  had  then,  and  its  interpretation  of  Him, 
as  it  has  more  accurate  knowledge  at  its  command,  ought 
to  have  more  truth  and  more  validity  than  belongs  to.  the 
symbols  of  Nicaea  and  Chalcedon.  If  there  has  been  develop- 
ment, it  must  mean  greater  competence  to  interpret  the 
Christ,  and  greater  truth  in  the  interpretation. 


§ IV. — The  Realm  of  the  Law. 

But  the  discussion  as  to  the  idea  of  development  and  the 
action  of  the  material  and  formal  factors  in  it  involves 
another — viz.,  as  to  its  scope  or  range.  The  facts  and 
phenomena  to  which  it  ought  to  be  applied  may  be  described 
as  of  two  classes — the  quantitative  or  extensive,  and  the 
qualitative  or  intensive.  The  quantitative  or  extensive  concern 
the  evolution  not  simply  of  a given  Church,  but  as  it  were 
of  Christendom,  of  the  varied  forms  of  thought  and  society 
under  which  men  have  attempted  to  realize  the  religion  of 
Christ.  This  indeed  represents  an  immense  area  of  inquiry, 
for  the  religion  is  so  rich  and  so  multiform  as  to  be  almost 
incapable  of  definition  or  even  description.  It  is  not  a single 
system  or  organization  ; it  is  a multitude  of  systems,  a crowd 
of  the  most  diverse  organizations  ; yet  it  is  none  of  these, 
but  rather  the  common  spirit  they  all  labour  to  realize,  the 
comm.on  purpose  they  all  endeavour  more  or  less  blindly  to 
fulfil.  Newman  said  ^ : “ Whatever  be  historical  Christianity, 
it  is  not  Protestantism,”  and  we  may  add,  still  less  is  it 
Catholicism.  “ If  ever  there  were  a safe  truth,  it  is  this.” 
The  religion  of  Christ  is  too  rich,  too  subtle,  too  incorporeal 
and  infinite  to  be  exhausted  in  any  single  system,  or 
embodied  even  in  so  finely  articulated  and  rigorous  an 
organism  as  the  Church  of  Rome.  That  Church,  immense 


* “Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,”  p.  5. 


THE  TEST  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 


43 


as  it  is,  is  but  a fraction  of  Christendom  ; on  the  one  side 
of  it  lies  the  Greek,  on  the  other  side  the  Anglican,  and 
beyond  these  the  Churches,  in  all  their  branches  and  varieties, 
that  have  been  in  a peculiar  degree  the  creators  of  the  modern 
world — the  Lutheran  and  the  Reformed.  No  Church  can 
claim  to  be  “ historical  Christianity  ” ; for  it  is  equal  to  all 
the  Churches,  yet  it  is  much  more  than  they  all.  Each  may 
have  played  its  own  part  in  history,  but  its  part  has  been 
small  compared  with  its  Founder’s.  His  religion  is  co- 
extensive with  His  influence  ; under  its  vast  canopy  the 
stateliest  Church  and  the  meanest  conventicle  alike  stand, 
and  in  His  presence  all  degrees  cease,  grandeur  is  abased,  and 
lowliness  is  exalted.  But  if  Churches  are  to  be  understood, 
it  must  be  not  through  the  claims  they  make  for  themselves, 
but  through  their  relations  to  Him  ; each  is  an  example  at 
once  of  His  power  and  action  on  the  world,  and  of  the  world’s 
power  and  action  on  Him  through  His  people.  Development 
cannot  concern  itself  with  less  than  this.  If  it  did  so, 
then  it  could  be  no  theory  or  law  exhibiting  the  growth  of 
the  faith  and  life  of  Christ  in  man.  Both  of  these  have 
existed  outside  as  well  as  inside  the  Churches,  often  in 
nobler  forms  without  than  within  ; and  everywhere  they  have 
been  His  and  from  Him.  Certainly,  if  all  good  and  holy 
living  be  due  to  Him,  it  comes  dangerously  near  impiety  to 
limit  His  “ covenanted  mercies  ” to  systems  which  the  hands 
of  man  have  built  and  the  vanity  of  man  has  called  the 
Church  of  Christ. 

The  phenomena  we  have  called  qualitative  or  intensive 
are  those  attributes  or  elements  which  Churches  have  claimed 
as  their  distinctive  characteristics.  These  may  be  matters 
of  polity,  or  doctrine,  or  offices  and  worship,  or  discipline 
and  conduct,  or  all  these  combined.  A scientific  theory 
of  development  must  seek  to  explain  all  the  Churches  and 
theologies  of  Christendom,  with  all  they  claim  to  be,  making 
all  equally  and  in  all  things  subjects  of  investigation  and  of 


44 


THE  LAW  AS  APPLIED  IN  HISTORY 


equal  investigation.  We  must  carefully  guard  against  as- 
sumptions which  either  exempt  from  its  action  the  phenomena 
which  it  is  most  needed  to  explain,  or  which  affirm  it  in  the 
region  where  it  is  a convenient  apologetic  while  excluding  it 
from  the  region  where  it  becomes  a reasonable  but  unwelcome 
explanation.  Thus  Newman’s  development  postulates  the 
being  and  claims  of  the  Roman  Church,  its  infallibility  and 
truth  ; but  while  he  skilfully  used  it  in  justification  of  his 
Church,  he  as  skilfully  avoided  its  use  in  the  explanation  of 
its  genesis.  Concede  the  Roman  claim,  and  his  theory  was 
an  ingenious  “ hypothesis  to  account  for  a difficulty  ” ; regard 
it  as  a claim  which  must  be  read  through  its  natural  history  as 
a problem  in  evolution,  and  the  “ hypothesis  ” cannot  be  got 
upon  its  feet ; it  is  absolutely  without  reason  or  function. 
Again,  it  is  equally  impossible  to  limit  development  to  a pro- 
cess of  formal  without  substantial  change,  which  the  Church 
is  said  to  conduct  with  a view  to  adjusting  herself  to  the 
changed  conditions  of  the  time.^  For  it  is  evident  that 
the  Church  and  its  Creed  are  assumed  to  be  exempted  from 
its  operation — i.e.,  the  developmental  process  is  not  one  which 
can  be  applied  to  this  Church  and  Creed,  but  one  which  they 
direct.  Their  being  and  truth  must  be  granted  before  it  can 
be  called  into  action,  and  even  then  it  can  act  only  under 
their  superintendence.  But  development  must  try  whether 
it  can  explain  the  Church  and  the  Creed  before  they  can 
be  allowed  to  use  development ; and  this  is  the  more  neces- 
sary, as  “ Christian  Church  ” here  means  not  the  Church  of 
Christ,  but  a specific  ecclesiastical  body,  and  “Creed”  the 
faith  of  certain  among  its  members. 

The  theory,  then,  must  be  either  rigorously  applied,  or  not  at 
all ; exceptions  in  favour  of  particular  Churches  are  impossible. 
History  must  be  impartial  ; it  knows  no  schism  and  recog- 
nizes no  dissent ; for  it  the  claims  of  Churches  are  subjects 
for  investigation,  not  sanctities  beyond  it.  Infallibility  may 
^ Moehler,  “ Svmbolik,”  § 40.  Cf.  “Lux  Mundi,”  pp.  viii.,  ix. 


IS  UNIVERSAL  IN  ITS  SCOPE. 


45 


command  or  satisfy  faith,  but  it  only  whets  the  curiosity  of 
science  by  presenting  it  with  a large  and  complex  problem. 
The  historian  sees  that  the  Christian  religion  is  a vaster  thing 
than  any  Christian  Church,  or  than  all  the  Churches  ; he  se6s 
too  that  these  Churches  differ  from  age  to  age  both  in  character 
and  action.  He  perceives  that  Catholicism  in  the  early  Middle 
Ages  helped  to  organize  modern  civilization,  but  has  been  in 
later  times  possibly  the  most  disintegrating  of  all  our  social 
forces.  The  countries  which  most  suffer  from  revolution  are 
the  countries  where  its  rule  is  or  has  been  most  absolute  ; 
the  countries  where  it  has  least  authority  most  represent 
order  and  progress.  The  historian  then  cannot  accept  a 
Church  at  its  own  estimate ; he  must  study  it  in  relation  to 
its  place  and  time,  ask  how  and  why  it  came  to  be,  how  it 
behaves,  and  with  what  results.  For  him  its  offices,  orders, 
creeds,  councils,  its  whole  systems  of  polity  and  belief,  are 
matters  for  inquiry  and  explanation  ; and  only  when  nature 
has  been  completely  exhausted  is  there  even  a possible 
apology  for  an  appeal  to  the  supernatural.  Start  with  the 
supernatural  as  a first  principle,  invest  the  forms  of  the 
society  or  its  political  framework  with  Divine  right  or  infallible 
authority,  and  it  is  so  lifted  out  of  historical  conditions  that 
it  ceases  to  be  an  object  to  which  development  can  be  applied.^ 

^ Mr.  Gore  begins  his  work  on  “ The  Church  and  the  Ministry  ” by 
making  two  assumptions,  one  being  “ the  truth  of  the  Incarnation  ” (p.  6). 
But  one  may,  because  of  his  very  reverence  for  “ the  truth  of  the  Incarna- 
tion,” object  to  it  being  assumed  as  an  apology  for  a polity  well  known 
outside  Christianity,  and  within  it  easily  capable  of  explanation  without 
any  such  assumption.  The  author  who  proceeds  in  this  way  only  assumes 
the  appearance  of  the  historical  inquirer  in  order  the  more  effectually  to  do 
the  work  of  the  dogmatic  divine.  He  acts  as  would  the  man  of  science 
who,  in  order  the  more  conclusively  to  prove  some  theory  of  his  own,  should 
begin  by  solemnly  assuming  the  omnipotence  of  the  Creator,  so  using  his 
faith  on  the  one  hand  to  become  independent  of  nature,  and  on  the  other 
to  suggest  that  the  opposite  theory  means  a nature  without  God.  But  here 
as  elsewhere  the  law  of  parsimony  rules  superfluous  causes  out  of  court. 
Apart  from  this  there  is  no  disproof  of  Mr.  Gore’s  theory  of  the  Church 
so  strong  as  the  Incarnation  and  the  terms  in  which  it  is  stated. 


46 


IT  MOVES  IN  THE  REALM  OF  SCIENCE. 


To  speak  of  it  in  the  terms  of  evolution  is  to  use  language  that 
has  no  meaning  ; to  employ  scientific  methods  in  the  investi- 
gation of  its  origin,  behaviour,  and  growth  is  to  force  science 
into  a region  where  it  has  no  place  and  no  problem.  To 
ascribe  development  to  it  is  only  to  say  that  it  uses  its  Divine 
attributes  to  act  on  fit  occasions  as  becomes  the  Divine.  But 
in  all  this,  as  there  is  no  nature  or  law,  so  there  is  no  room 
for  the  inquirer  whose  function  is  to  explain  nature  by  the 
discovery  of  her  laws. 


CHAPTER  II. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CHURCH, 

HE  exposition  of  the  idea  or  doctrine  of  development  has 


X implied  throughout  that  for  it  there  is  only  one  method 
of  verification — viz.,  the  comparison  and  correlation  of  the 
various  factors  and  forms  of  change.  The  primitive  organism 
must  be  studied  till  it  is  known,  and  so  must  the  primitive  en- 
vironment ; the  result  must  then  be  examined  and  compared 
with  the  forces  active  in  organism  and  environment  respectively. 
Only  by  a method  like  this  can  we  discover  what  each  has  con- 
tributed to  the  total  effect.  Of  course  the  old  forces  will  not 
remain  as  old  when  new-combined  ; and  so,  while  the  forces 
are  correlated,  the  changed  or  modified  structure  must  always 
be  compared  with  the  original,  in  order  that  we  may  know 
whether  there  has  been  variation,  and  to  what  degree  ; whether 
its  efficiency  has  been  increased  or  decreased  ; and  whether 
the  organism  has  been  more  powerful  to  subdue  the  environ- 
ment, or  the  environment  the  organism.  All  we  can  do  here 
is  to  illustrate  the  process  in  outline  ; to  exhibit  it  in  detail 
would  be  to  write  a constructive  history  of  the  Church. 


§ L— The  Creative  Organism. 


This  is  the  causal  Person  and  Mind,  Jesus  Christ.  The 
religion  is  His  creation ; all  Churches  derive,  directly  or 
indirectly,  their  being  from  Him.  How  we  conceive  Him  and 
His  Church  will  appear  later.  Enough  to  say  here,  while  He 


47 


48 


THE  CREATIVE  PERSON  NORMATIVE. 


institutes  a new  society  and  fills  it  with  His  own  life,  He 
gives  it  no  fixed  or  formal  political  constitution.  He  is  its 
Founder,  its  Head,  its  inspiration,  its  personalized  ideal  of 
religion.  His  people  are  intended  to  be  like  Him — as  it  were 
His  person  augmented,  immortalized,  multiplied  into  innu- 
merable hosts,  and  enduring  through  all  ages.  Now,  what  sort 
of  religious  ideal  did  He  personalize  ? What  was  most  distinc- 
tive of  Him  was  His  consciousness  of  God,  the  kind  of  God 
He  was  conscious  of,  and  the  relation  He  sustained  to  Him. 
God  was  His  Father ; He  was  God’s  Son.  What  God  was  to 
Him  He  desired  Him  to  be  to  all  men  ; what  He  was  to  God 
all  men  ought  to  be.  In  Christ’s  ideal  of  religion,  then,  the 
most  material  or  determinative  truth  is  the  conception  of  God. 
He  appears  primarily,  not  as  a God  of  judgment  or  justice, 
but  of  mercy  and  grace,  the  Father  of  man,  who  needs  not  to 
be  appeased,  but  is  gracious,  propitious,  finds  the  Propitiator, 
provides  the  propitiation.  His  own  Son  is  the  one  Sacrifice, 
Priest,  and  Mediator,  appointed  of  God  to  achieve  the  recon- 
ciliation of  man.  Men  are  God’s  sons  ; filial  love  is  their 
primary  duty,  fraternal  love  their  common  and  equal  obliga- 
tion. Worship  does  not  depend  on  sacred  persons,  places,  or 
rites  ; but  is  a thing  of  spirit  and  truth.  The  best  prayer  is 
secret  and  personal : the  man  who  best  pleases  God  is  not  the 
scrupulous  Pharisee,  but  the  penitent  publican.  Measured  by 
the  standard  of  a sacerdotal  religion,  Jesus  was  not  a pious 
person.  He  spoke  no  word,  did  no  act,  that  implied  the 
necessity  of  an  official  priesthood  for  His  people  : He  enforced 
no  sacerdotal  observance,  instituted  no  sacerdotal  order,  pro- 
mulgated no  sacerdotal  law,  but  simply  required  that  His 
people  should  be  perfect  as  their  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect. 
And  so  what  He  founded  was  a society  to  realize  His  own 
ideal,  a kingdom  of  heaven,  spiritual,  internal,  which  came 
without  observation  ; a realm  where  the  will  of  God  is  law, 
and  the  law  is  love,  and  the  citizens  are  the  loving  and  the 
obedient,  whose  type  is  the  reverent  and  tender  and  trustful 


A RELIGION  WITHOUT  PRIESTS. 


49 


child,  not  the  hard  and  boasting  man.  In  its  collective  being 
it  has  a priestly  character,  but  is  without  an  official  priesthood. 
It  has  airoaroXoi,^  'irpoc^rjTai^  iirlaKoiroif  irpea^vrepoi,^ 
TTOt/xei^e?,®  BtSdaKoXoL,^  htdicovoi^  evayyekto-Tai,^  but  no  /epet? 
— no  man,  or  body  of  men,  who  bear  the  name,  hold  the 
place,  exercise  the  functions,  or  fulfil  the  duties  of  the  priest 
or  the  priesthood,  as  they  were  known  in  ancient  religions. 
It  has  no  temple,  save  the  living  man  ; no  sacrifices,  save 
those  of  the  spirit  and  the  life  ; no  sensuous  sanctities.  Its 
Founder  never  called  Himself  a priest ; stood  to  the  priest- 
hood of  His  land  and  time  in  radical  antagonism  ; the  writer 
who  applies  to  Him  the  name  High  Priest  carefully  avoids 
applying  this  or  any  similar  name  to  any  class  of  His  people, 
and  those  who  describe  His  work  as  a sacrifice  never  attach 
any  similar  idea  to  any  acts  of  any  officials  or  their  instru- 
ments of  worship.  And  this  may  be  said  to  represent  on  the 
negative  side  the  absolutely  new  and  distinctive  character  of 
the  religion  of  Christ.  It  stood  among  the  ancient  faiths  as  a 
strange  and  extraordinary  thing — a priestless  religion,  without 
the  symbols,  sacrifices,  ceremonies,  officials  hitherto,  save  by 
prophetic  Hebraism,  held  to  be  the  religious  all  in  all.  And 
it  so  stood,  because  its  God  did  not  need  to  be  propitiated, 
but  was  propitious,  supplying  the  only  priest  and  sacrifice 
equal  to  His  honour  and  the  sins  and  wants  of  man.  In  that 
hour  God  became  a new  being  to  man,  and  man  knew  himself 
to  be  more  than  a mere  creature  and  subject — a son  of  the 
living  God. 

Plere,  then,  stated  in  the  most  general  yet  distinctive  terms, 

1 Luke  vi.  13  ; Matt.  x.  2 ; Acts  i.  2,  26,  iv.  33;  i Cor.  xii.  28,  etc, 

* I Cor.  xii.  28  ; Eph.  ii.  20,  iii,  5,  iv.  il. 

® Acts  XX.  28  ; Phil.  i.  i ; Tit.  i.  7. 

* Acts  xiv.  23,  XV.  2,  4,  6,  22,  23  ; i Tim.  v.  17. 

^ Eph.  iv.  II. 

® Acts  xiii.  I ; i Cor.  xii.  28,  29  ; Eph.  iv.  ii  ; i Tim.  ii.  7 ; 2 Tim.  I-II. 

^ I Cor.  iii.  5 ; 2 Cor.  iii.  6,  vi.  4,  xi.  23  ; Eph.  iii.  7 ; Phil.  i.  I. 

® Acts  xxi.  8 ; Eph.  iv.  ii  ; 2 Tim.  iv.  5. 


50 


THE  PRIMITIVE  ORGANISM 


was,  as  regards  its  essential  character,  the  religion  which  Jesus 
Christ  instituted.  But  how  was  it  to  be  realized  ? under 
w^hat  forms  and  by  what  agencies  organized  ? It  was  full  of 
infinite  possibilities  of  all  kinds — intellectual,  moral,  social, 
political,  religious.  It  involved  new  beliefs  as  to  God,  as  to 
its  Founder,  as  to  man  ; as  to  their  natures,  characters,  rela- 
tions ; as  to  all  the  religions  of  the  world,  their  worth,  function, 
history  ; as  to  all  the  ideas  that  most  command  men  and 
organize  society.  It  was  a source  of  new  moral  forces,  intro- 
duced higher  and  nobler  ideals,  created  a finer  sense  of  obliga- 
tions towards  God,  and  a more  sensitive  conscience  as  regards 
man.  It  formed  a brotherhood  that  was  ambitious  to  embrace 
the  world.  It  was  bound  to  feel  after  the  polity  or  social 
framework  that  should  best  help  it  to  fulfil  all  its  functions, 
and  to  seek  methods  of  worship  and  religious  association  that 
would  enable  it  to  do  justice  to  all  its  own  possibilities  and  all 
the  needs  of  man.  And  these  elements  stood  so  related  to 
one  another  that  whatever  touched  any  affected  all.  Here, 
then,  is  the  problem  : How  did  this  parent  germ  or  crea- 
tive organism — the  religion  instituted  by  Christ — behave 
in  its  various  environments  ? What  was  their  action  on  it 
and  its  action  on  them?  How  far  were  the  forms  it  assumed 
and  the  elements  it  incorporated  due  to  the  immanent  laws  of 
its  own  being  or  to  the  action  of  the  medium  in  which  it 
lived  ? To  these  questions  we  must  return  as  clear  an  answer 
as  our  limits  will  allow. 


§ II. — The  Primitive  Environments. 

The  environment  in  which  the  religion  began  to  be  was 
Judaic.  Its  Founder  was  of  Jewish  descent.  His  theistic, 
religious,  ethical,  social  ideals,  so  far  as  they  have  any  prior 
history,  find  it  in  Judaism  ; institutions  of  its  creation,  as 
the  school  and  the  synagogue,  were  used  by  Him  and  His 
disciples  for  the  spread  of  the  religion ; their  termini  tech7iici^ 


AND  PRIMITIVE  ENVIRONMENT. 


51 


BaatXeia  rod  Oeou  or  ovpavMV,^  htaOT^fcr]^  i/CKXrjala*  vofio^,^ 
7rpocf)r)TeLa,^  ScKaLoavvrj,^  apbaprla,^  a'TroKd\v'\^i<^}^  Xpta- 

To?/^  vlo^  rov  dvOpMTTov,^^  u/69  rov  ©eoO/^  can  be  con- 

strued only  through  the  Judaism  either  of  the  motherland  or  of 
the  dispersion.  It  creates  as  it  were  the  atmosphere  in  which 
the  New  Testament  as  a whole  lives;  its  terminology,  theses, 
antitheses,  its  modes  of  argument  and  of  proof,  its  conflicts, 
controversies,  policies,  its  local  colourings  and  questions,  its 
very  attempts  to  break  from  the  bonds  of  the  law  and  become 
spiritual  and  universal,  are  all  conditioned  by  Judaism.  The 
types  are  many,  but  the  system  is  one  : now  it  is  the  Judaism 
of  Palestine,  as  in  Matthew  ; of  Asia  Minor,  as  in  the  Apoca- 
lypse ; of  the  tolerant  metropolis,  as  in  Romans  ; of  a narrow 
and  hot-blooded  province,  as  in  Galatians  ; of  a philosophical 
community,  which  has  idealized  the  worship  and  history  of 
the  Fathers,  as  in  Hebrews  ; but  whatever  the  peculiarity  of 
local  type  the  thing  remains.  John  and  Luke  are  as  full  of 
it  as  Matthew  and  Mark  ; it  as  subtly  penetrates  Epistles  to 
Gentile  Churches,  full  of  the  passion  of  spiritual  universalism, 
like  Corinthians  and  Colossians,  as  those  expressly  addressed 
to  Jews,  like  James  and  i Peter.  But  these  conditions 
hardly  outlived  the  first  generation.  Two  things  happened 
almost  simultaneously  : Jerusalem  was  destroyed,  depriving 

* Matt.  vi.  33,  xii.  28  ; Mark  i.  15,  iv.  Ii,  26,  30,  etc. 

* Matt.  iv.  17,  V.  3,  10,  19,  20,  xiii.  ii,  24,  31,  33. 

® Matt.  xxvi.  28 ; i Cor.  xi.  25  ; 2 Cor.  iii.  6 ; Heb.  vii.  22,  viii.  6,  8,  9,  10, 

etc. 

* Matt.  xvi.  18,  xviii.  17;  Acts  v.  ii,  viii.  i,  xiv.  23,  etc. 

® Matt.  V.  17,  vii.  12,  xi.  13;  Rom.  ii.  12,  14,  15,  iii.  19,  20,  21,  etc. 

® I Cor.  xii.  10,  xiv.  6,  12,  etc. 

^ Rom.  i.  5,  17,  iii.  22,  v.  i ; i Cor.  xv.  14,  17  ; Gal.  i.  23,  iii.  9,  etc. 

® Rom.  i.  17,  iii.  21,  22,  25,  26,  x.  3 ; 2 Cor.  v.  21. 

® Mark  i.  4,  ii.  5 ; John  i.  29  ; Rom.  v.  12,  13,  20,  21,  vii.  7,  8,  14,  17. 

Rom.  xvi.  25  ; i Cor.  i.  7,  xiv.  6,  26  ; Eph.  i.  17,  iii.  3. 

Matt.  xxii.  42,  xxiv.  5,  23,  xxvi.  63. 

Matt.  xii.  8,  32,  40,  xiii.  37  ; Mark  ii.  10,  28,  etc. 

13  Matt.  xvi.  16,  xxvi.  63 ; Mark  iii.  ii  ; John  i.  34,  50,  iii.  18,  xi.  27. 

John  i.  I,  14;  I John  i.  i. 


52 


JUDAISM  THE  ENEMY  OF  CHRISTIANITY, 


the  Jewish  religion  of  its  Temple  and  priesthood,  and  reducing 
it  to  a mere  system  of  customs  and  instruction  accommodated 
to  the  needs  of  a homeless  people  ; and  the  Church,  opened  by 
the  preaching  of  Paul,  became  more  Gentile  than  Jewish. 
This  meant  a change  at  once  of  race  and  of  home  ; the  cradle 
of  the  religion  ceased  to  be  its  nursery.  So  it  forgot  the 
tongue  of  its  birthplace  and  learned  the  speech  of  its  new 
motherland  ; in  other  words,  while  it  was  still  in  its  infancy 
all  the  historical  conditions  with  all  their  determinative 
factors,  everything  that  could  be  denoted  by  the  terms  blood, 
language,  institutions,  associations,  traditions,  habits,  customs, 
mind,  culture,  religious  consciousness,  literature,  history,  were 
completely  changed,  with  the  inevitable  result  that  new  evolu- 
tionary forces  were  called  into  being  by  the  new  conditions. 
And  these  forces  became  factors  of  both  formal  and  material 
changes,  and  their  power  was  enhanced  rather  than  weakened 
by  the  action  of  old  agencies  within  the  new  medium. 

But  while  Christianity  escaped  from  Judaism,  yet  it  was  not 
delivered  from  the  Jews  ; they  represented  its  bitterest  enemies, 
its  acutest  opponents,  the  source  of  its  most  serious  dangers. 
The  heresies  it  had  most  to  fear,  the  differences  and  divisions 
that  had  been  most  threatening  and  most  nearly  disastrous, 
the  tales  that  had  most  deeply  affronted  its  ethical  and 
reverent  spirit,  had  been  of  Jewish  origin.^  Hence  came  an 
attitude  to  Judaism  and  the  Jews^  which  had  its  strongest 
possible  contrast  in  the  ideal  attitude  to  their  history  and 
religion  and  Scriptures.  Jesus  had  been  born  a Jew.  He 
had  come  to  fulfil  the  law  and  the  prophets  ; to  their  authority 

^ Justin,  “ Apol.,”  i.,  cc.  31,  36  ; “ Dial,”  cc.  16,  95  ; “ Martyr.  Polyc.,”  cc. 
17-19;  Origen,  “Contra  Cels.,”  i.  28-39. 

2 Barnabas,  iv.  6-8,  says  that  they  lost  the  covenant  as  soon  as  they  had 
received  it;  ix.  4,  were  instructed  by  an  “evil  angel”;  and  xiv.  i,  did  not 
receive  the  covenant  because  of  their  sins.  So  Freed.  Petri^  in  Clem. 
Al.  “Strom.,”  vi.  5,  41,  affirms  that  they  do  not  know  God,  and  worship, 
instead  of  Him,  angels  and  archangels,  moons  and  sabbaths.  Cf.  Justin, 
“Apol,”  i.  36,  37,  47,  53;  “Didache,”  viii.  i ; “ Ign.  Ep.  ad  Mag.,”  x.  2. 
Judaism  is  described  as  rrjv  KaKrjv  ttjv  naXaiccddaav  kuX  ivo^iaaaav. 


YET  MEDIUM  FOR  ITS  INTERPRETATION. 


53 


He  and  His  disciples  alike  appealed.  So  while  the  Gentile 
Christian  rejected  Judaism,  he  had  to  do  it  under  sanction  of 
the  Jewish  Scriptures,^  which  were  to  him  canonical,  authentic, 
and  inspired.^  Then,  though  the  Apostolic  writings  existed, 
the  New  Testament  did  not ; its  parts  had  an  isolated  or 
dispersed  being,  but  they  had  not  been  joined  into  a whole, 
collected,  canonized,  and  made  authoritative.^  The  ante- 
cedents of  the  sub-Apostolic  literature  and  thought  are  oral 
and  actual  rather  than  written  and  ideal  Christianity^ — a 
Christianity  simple,  inchoate,  as  it  were  intellectually  inarticu- 
lated,  often  ill-informed  as  to  its  own  sources  and  history, 

^ Barn,,  cc.  vi.-x.  The  Old  Testament  ceremonies  are  all  abolished  and 
spiritually  fulfilled  in  the  new  people  of  God.  Clem.,  2 Ep.  xiv.  2,  where 
Tu  )3i/3Xia  denotes  the  Old  Testament.  Justin,  “ Dial.,”cc.  ii,  16,  18,  20,  30, 
40-46,  argues — Christians’are  the  true  Israel,  their  new  law  was  predicted 
and  prefigured  in  the  old,  and  has  superseded  it.  Cf.  Harnack, 
“ Dogmengesch.,”  vol.  i.,  pp.  146,  147,  text  and  notes  ; but  especially  “Texte 
u.  Untersch.,’'  vol.  i,,  pt.  iii.,  “ Altercatio  Simonis,”  pp.  56-91  ; Engelhardt, 
“ Das  Christenthum  Justin’s,”  pp.  245-261  and  310-320. 

2 The  modes  of  citation  are  significant.  In  Clem.  R.  the  Old  Testament 
is  quoted  as  17  ypaep^,  cc.  23,  34,  35;  as  ro  ypapelov,  28;  as  at  Upal 
ypa<pal,  53.  Its  words  are  quoted  as  Christ's  own,  spoken  dia  rov  7rvevp,aTns 
Tov  ayiov,  22  ; or  as  God’s  own,  Xeyet  (sc.  ©ed?,  or  Kvptos)  Cf.  Barn.  i.  7, 
iv.  7,  IT,  V.  7. 

^ Of  course,  the  reference  in  the  text  is  a strictly  limited  one  ; it  does 
not  deny  the  use  of  Apostolic  writings  in  the  sub-Apostolic.  The  extent  of 
this  can  be  seen  from  the  indexes  to  Gebhardt  and  Harnack,  or  Lightfoot’s 
“Apostolic  Fathers,”  or  any  good  book  on  the  canon — Credner  or  Reuss, 
Holtzmann  or  Weiss,  Westcott  or  Zahn.  What  is  affirmed  is  not  only  that 
the  New  Testament  had  not  been  co-ordinated  with  the  Old,  but  that  it  did 
not  exist  as  a canon  or  body  of  authoritative  religious  books.  It  is,  of 
course,  the  case  that  certain  texts  can  be  quoted  as  evidence  that  certain 
New  Testament  books  or  sayings  were  referred  to  as  Scriptures  (e.g., 
2 Peter  iii.  16 — “ all  the  epistles  ” of  “ our  beloved  brother  Paul  ” ; Ep.  Polyc. 
xii.  I quotes  Eph.  iv.  26  with  Psalm  iv.  5 as  Scriptures,  Barn.  iv.  14  cites 
Matt.  xxii.  14  with  the  formula  ws  yeypairrat,  2 Clem,  ii,  4 introduces  Matt, 
ix.  13  with  the  phrase  kuI  irepa  di  ypapr]  Xeyei,  while  in  xiii.  4 the  formula 
Xe-yet  6 ©ed?  is  used  relative  to  Luke  vi.  32,  35)  ; but  these  in  no  way  affect 
the  statement  of  the  text.  As  a simple  matter  of  fact,  broadly  stated,  the 
sacred  authoritative  book  of  the  sub-Apostolic  Church  was  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, not  the  New. 

* Cf.  Papias  ap.  Euseb.,  bk.  iii.,  c.  39. 


54 


VULGAR  TRADITION  MORE  INTELLIGIBLE 


its  own  reason  and  significance,  full  of  local  varieties  and 
many  gradations  of  mind  and  culture.  The  later  is  then  not 
the  continuation  of  the  earlier  thought,  but  of  something  at 
once  simpler  and  less  primitive,  what  we  may  term  vulgar 
and  mixed  tradition.  This  tradition,  which  represented  the 
Word  as  it  lived  in  the  memories  and  mouths  of  men,  was 
more  intelligible  to  the  new  mind  than  the  New  Testament, 
and  so  was  more  capable  of  interpretation  by  it.^  The  Church, 
too,  was  not  an  organized  whole,  or  even  a homogeneous 
body  ; it  did  not  form  the  men  it  incorporated  after  a single 
or  uniform  type.  Hence,  though  the  Gentile  became  a 
Christian,  he  did  not  cease  to  be  a Gentile,  or  to  think  in 
the  terms  and  under  the  categories  he  had  inherited,  and  so 
he  could  not  construe  the  religion  exactly  in  the  sense  of  its 
first  preachers.  The  difference  is  not 'due  to  purpose,  but 
as  it  were  to  nature  and  history,  and  exists  where  there  is 
the  utmost  desire  to  express  and  maintain  harmony  with 
the  Apostolic  mind.  It  springs  from  many  and  complex 
causes,  which  were  all  natural  in  their  origin  and  inevitable 
in  their  action.  The  Gentile  Christian  did  not  and  could 
not  come  like  the  Apostles  to  the  New  Testament  through 
the  Old,  or  like  the  Hellenists  to  the  Church  through  the 
synagogue;  he  rather  read  the  Old  Testament  through  t{ie 

^ There  is  no  doctrine  more  in  need  of  scientific  discussion  than  that  ot 
tradition.  It  is  most  vaguely  used  in  much  of  the  theological  literature  of 
the  day.  Before  there  was  a New  Testament  there  could  not  but  be  a 
napaSoo-i?,  but  it  was  the  note  of  a young  community  and  a transitional 
age.  The  longer  it  continued  the  more  unsafe  it  grew  ; the  remoter 
from  the  source  the  less  it  could  be  used  as'  an  authority.  The  written 
word  is  valuable  because  it  remains  for  ever  primitive — the  oldest  testi- 
mony crystallized,  as  it  were,  in  the  very  act  of  expression  ; but  tradition, 
so  far  as  it  remains  oral,  ceases  to  be  primitive,  is  augmented  or  modified 
by  time,  and  ever  assumes  the  hue  or  tone  of  the  age  through  which  it 
is  passing.  It  must  always  remain  more  significant  of  the  present  that 
receives  it  than  of  the  past  whence  it  professes  to  come.  The  only  true 
parallel  to  the  modern  Catholic  doctrine — whether  Roman  or  Anglican — 
is  to  be  found  in  the  Uapdboais  of  the  Pharisaic  and  rabbinical  schools 
(Matt.  XV.  2,  3,  6;  Mark  vii.  3,  5,  8,  9,  13;  Gal.  i.  14;  Col.  ii.  8). 


THAN  APOSTOLIC  TPIOUGHT. 


55 


New,  the  synagogue  through  the  Church,  and  all  through 
his  inherited  consciousness,  his  Greek  philosophy  and  Roman 
polity. 


§ III.— Tpie  Immediate  Result. 

And  as  were  the  conditions,  such  was  the  theology.  If  the 
Apostolic  and  sub-Apostolic  ages  be  studied  through  their 
highest  and  most  characteristic  beliefs,  then  we  may  say — they 
are  successive  rather  than  continuous,  the  later  is  the  sequent 
in  time  but  not  in  thought  of  the  earlier,  the  legitimate  re- 
sultant of  all  the  factors  and  conditions,  but  not  a normal  or 
logical  or  lineal  evolution  from  the  ideal  of  the  New  Testament. 
Its  literature  is  concerned  with  the  same  subjects  as  the  Apos- 
tolic, but  almost  everything  in  it  is  different — the  atmosphere, 
the  altitude,  the  proportion  of  parts,  the  emphasis  on  terms 
or  ideas,  the  regulative  principles  of  thought.  It  would  be 
easy  so  to  exhibit  differences  as  to  conceal  harmonies,  or  to 
draw  up  a harmony  which  would  mask  differences  ; what  is 
difficult  is  to  show  the  precise  significance  and  exact  propor- 
tion of  both.^  Of  the  Apostolic  literature  we  may  say — it  is 
even  more  important  as  a body  of  religious  authorities  than  of 
historical  documents  ; but  of  the  sub-Apostolic — there  are  no 
more  important  historical  documents,  but  no  poorer  religious 
authorities.  What  is  absent  is  even  more  remarkable  than 
what  is  present.  We  have  reminiscences  of  sacred  history, 
now  correct,  now  incorrect.  We  have  often  large  explicit  use 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  echoes  of  the  New,  becoming  now 

^ Bull’s  “ Defensio  Fidei  Nicaenae  ” is  full  of  examples  of  forced  harmonies 
in  the  region  of  dogma.  So  are  some  of  Newman’s  tracts,  his  “ History  of 
the  Arians,”  and  his  notes  to  his  edition  of  Athanasius’  “ Orations.”  His 
“ Development,”  on  the  other  hand,  contains  examples  of  an  opposite  kind. 
The  differences  and  agreements  between  the  two  ages  have  equal,  yet  con- 
trary, historical  significance.  The  agreements  show  the  continuity  of  the 
society,  but  the  differences  exhibit  the  changes  within  the  society,  due  to 
the  changes  of  men  and  time  and  place.  Recognition  of  both  is  needed  if 
there  is  to  be  any  real  philosophy  of  the  genesis  and  history  of  the  Church. 


56 


APOSTOLIC  AND  SUB-APOSTOLIC  TPIOUGHT  : 


and  then,  as  it  were,  articulate  as  distinct  quotations.  We 
have  examples  of  old  customs  like  the  weekly  assembly  or 
baptism  or  the  Lord’s  Supper,  either  modified  or  in  process 
of  modification.  We  have  insight  into  the  state  of  the  young 
communities ; their  offices  and  their  ideas  of  office  ; their 
order,  troubles,  hopes,  fears,  sufferings  ; their  mutual  relations  ; 
their  manifold  differences  alike  as  regards  opinion,  discipline, 
and  conduct  ; and,  above  all,  we  are  made  to  feel  the  reality 
of  the  new  life  which  has  come  through  Jesus  Christ — the 
beautiful  reverence  and  pure  love  for  Him  that  lives  in  all 
hearts,  and  represents  His  continuous  being  in  His  society. 
But  the  moment  we  enter  the  region  of  thought  we  feel  the 
change  of  atmosphere  ; whole  classes  of  beliefs  are  absent 
or  inadequately  expressed.^  We  miss  the  great  Pauline  or 
Johannine  conceptions,  the  unity  and  continuity  of  man,  sin 
and  grace,  law  and  gospel,  works  and  faith  ; the  meaning  of 
the  Son  for  the  Father,  of  the  Father  for  the  world  ; the  signi- 
ficance of  the  Word  for  God  and  His  work  for  men.  Religious 
thought  has  become  more  legal  and  less  ethical  ; a new  emphasis 
falls  on  knowledge  ; the  antithesis  to  the  Old  Testament  is  lost, 
and  its  ceremonial  ideas  are  seen,  disguised  as  to  form  but  un- 
changed as  to  essence,  returning  to  power.  The  heresies  are 
different,  and  so  are  the  orthodoxies.  The  relation  of  God  to 
the  world,  of  spirit  to  matter,  of  the  Fall  and  Redemption,  of 
the  beginning,  course,  and  end  of  the  world,  are,  within  as 

^ In  measuring  in  the  region  of  theology  the  difference  between  the 
Apostolic  and  sub-Apostolic  age,  two  standards  must  be  employed — the 
quality  of  the  thought  that  is  absent,  and  the  inadequate  character  of  what 
is  present.  Each  has  a different  yet  complementary  significance.  What 
is  absent  shows  how  the  new  mind  had  failed  to  grasp  not  only  the  whole 
truth,  but  even  some  of  its  most  fundamental  principles  ; what  is  present 
shows  that  what  it  did  grasp  it  did  not  fully  understand.  This  concerns, 
e.g.^  such  matters  as  the  Pauline  doctrines  of  sin  and  death  (i  Clem.  iii.  4, 
cf.  iv.),  faith  and  justification  (i  Clem,  xxxii.  4,  cf.  x.-xii.  ; Herrnas  Sim. 
V.  3.  1-2-3).  The  person  of  Christ  and  the  Holy  Spirit  are  identified 
(Herrnas  Sim.,  ix.  i.  i : cf.  12.  i,  2 ; v.  2 if.).  The  kingdom  of  God  is  made 
more  future  and  less  ethical,  and  God  is  conceived  in  a manner  more  Judaic 
than  Christian. 


THEIR  DIFFERENCES  AND  AGREEMENTS. 


57 


without  the  Church,  conceived  from  a new  standpoint,  and 
determined  in  the  light  of  other  principles.  Speaking  broadly, 
we  may  say,  from  the  intellectual  point  of  view  the  men  have 
hardly  begun  to  understand  the  alphabet  of  the  religion  ; 
their  world  is  smaller,  meaner,  emptier,  than  the  Apostolic,  is 
in  relation  to  it  neither  a development  nor  a decline,  but 
rather  a thing  of  another  order — the  first  endeavour  of  the 
child-mind  to  understand  the  truth.  The  men  are  not  yet 
prepared  to  know  the  religion.  They  excellently  illustrate 
the  influence  of  tradition  without  Scripture,  and  the  inability 
of  an  undisciplined  and  inchoate  Christian  consciousness  to 
interpret  Christ. 


CHAPTER  III. 


JVi:w  FACTORS  AND  NEW  LINES  OF 
EEVELOPMENT. 

OUR  discussions,  so  far  as  they  have  proceeded,  have 
helped  to  determine  some  positions  of  primary 
importance.  First,  ecclesiastical  development,  especially  as 
concerns  thought  or  doctrine,  does  not  begin  at  the  point 
where  the  New  Testament  leaves  us,  but,  as  it  were,  behind 
and  outside  it — from  tradition,  the  oral  Gospel,  the  narration 
and  exposition,  often  inadequate  and  ill-understood,  of  the 
wandering  propheH  Secondly,  since  the  men  who  received 
the  tradition  mostly  differed  in  tongue,  mind,  ancestry,  moral 
and  religious  inheritance,  from  the  men  who  delivered  it,  the 
change  of  hands  could  not  but  involve  some  change  of  mean- 
ing. Thirdly,  this  change  was  made  the  more  serious  by  the 
fact  that  the  Scriptures  through  which  the  new  men  inter- 
preted the  tradition,  were  mainly  those  of  the  Old  Testament. 
It  is  curious  but  significant  that  the  orthodox  and  heretical 
tendencies  were  here  the  exact  converse  of  each  other ; while 
the  latter  discredited  and  dismissed  the  Old  Testament  and 
made  their  appeal  to  the  New,  the  former  did  not  so  much 
co-ordinate  the  two  as  subordinate  the  later  to  the  earlier 
Scriptures,  reconveying  the  legal  spirit  and  idea  of  the  one 
into  the  other.  We  may  say,  then,  that  the  thought  of  the 
ancient  Church  starts  rather  from  the  vulgar  than  from  the 
Apostolic  mind,  and  so  far ' as  it  can  be  placed  in  relation 

1 “ Didache,”  xi. 

58 


GRECO-ROMAN  FACTORS  OF  CHANGE. 


59 


to  the  latter  is  rather  a mirror  of  difference  than  a 
point  in  a line  of  continuous  development.  But  the  full 
significance  of  these  positions  will  appear  more  in  the  next 
stage  of  the  discussion — viz.,  the  study  of  the  modified 
organism  and  the  new  environment  in  their  reciprocal  and 
evolutionary  action  By  the  modified  organism  is  meant 
the  Christian  society  as  affected  by  those  changes  in  its 
conditions,  which  have  been  already  indicated  ; by  the  new 
environment,  the  Greco-Roman  world  into  which  it  had 
come.  The  factors  of  evolution  are,  so  far  as  they  belong 
to  the  former,  internal,  to  the  latter,  external,  but  their  force 
is  due  to  their  relation  and  interdependence,  not  to  their 
isolation. 


§ I. — The  New  Factors. 

The  most  potent  external  factors  may  be  reduced  to  three  : 
Greek  Philosophy,  Roman  Polity,  and  Popular  Religion. 

I.  The  philosophy,  though  Greek  in  origin  and  largely 
also  in  form,  was  yet  varied  both  in  distribution  and  in  cha- 
racter. Eclecticism  was  then  as  distinctive  of  philosophy  as 
syncretism  of  religion,  and  its  materials  were  selected  not 
simply  from  philosophical  but  also  from  religious  or  hieratic 
systems.  In  Asia  Minor  dualisms  or  theosophies  which  had 
filtered  from  the  farther  East,  or  spontaneously  developed 
upon  the  congenial  soil,  assumed  forms  at  once  intellectual  and 
religious,  and  became  (a)  philosophies  like  the  neo-Pythagorean, 
ecstatic,  theosophic,  miraculous,  penetrated  with  the  true 
Oriental  spirit  of  sensuous  asceticism  and  speculative  licence  ; 
or  (/3)  mixed  systems  of  thought  and  ritual  like  Gnosticism, 
dualisms  through  and  through,  societies  of  the  initiated  divid- 
ing themselves  by  their  Gnosis  from  the  vulgar  crowd,  and 
God  from  the  world  by  a multitude  of  personalized  abstrac- 
tions, by  charms  protecting  themselves  from  matter,  and  by 
.Tlons  protecting  God  ; or  (7)  religious  doctrines  like  Mani- 
cheism,  which  attempted  in  the  manner  of  the  Zoroastrian 


6o 


PHILOSOPHY,  POLITY,  AND  RELIGION 


faith  to  solve  our  intellectual  and  moral  difficulties  by  the 
theory  of  rival  deitiesd  In  Alexandria  three  great  tendencies 
met : {a)  the  Egyptian,  with  its  rich  and  complex  symbolism, 
its  hieroglyphic  and  hieratic  language,  its  esoteric  thought 
and  ancient  priesthood  ; {ff)  the  Jewish,  with  its  theistic 
passion  and  large  outlook  upon  nature  and  history ; and 
(7)  the  Greek,  wdth  its  constructive  temper,  scientific  method, 
literary  education  and  genius.  Here  philosophy  became 
neo-Platonic,  possessed  of  the  imaginative  idealism  which 
loves  to  find  nature  symbolical  and  history  an  allegory,  yet 
cosmopolitan,  eclectic,  construing  Greek  speculation  through 
Egyptian  mysticism,  and  finding  in  Hebrew  monotheism 
the  unifying  and  determinative  principle.  In  Rome  and  the 
West  Stoicism  reigned,  and  by  its  help  the  ideal  man  was 
studied,  virtue  cultivated,  law  magnified,  the  State  made  to 
experience  a sort  of  apotheosis.  The  elevated  Pantheism 
that  was  its  speculative  basis  was  so  conceived  as  to  deify 
the  Empire  and  make  worship  of  the  Emperor  a reasonable 
service.  Thought  in  all  its  forms  was  as  active  as  in  the 
palmiest  days  of  the  Academy,  but  it  was  without  the  old 
lucid  serenity  ; it  had  become,  save  in  the  case  of  the  nobler 
Stoics,  feverish,  sophistic,  mystic,  curious  to  know  the  beliefs 
and  try  the  ways  of  other  times  and  other  peoples. 

2.  While  such  was  the  philosophy,  the  polity  was  Roman  in 
the  widest  sense,  imperial,  provincial,  municipal,  social,  and 
industrial — i.e.,  the  polity  of  the  Empire  as  a whole,  of  its 
several  parts,  though  as  modified  by  the  whole,  of  the  cities 
that  even  when  they  had  become  Roman  did  not  cease  to 
be  Greek  or  Greco-Syrian  or  African,  of  the  peoples  and 
classes  who  endeavoured  to  preserve  their  nationalities, 

^ Of  course  this  refers  to  the  earlier  Gnostic  schools  and  the  sources  of 
the  elements  they  compounded.  Later  the  chief  seat  of  their  activity 
was  Alexandria.  Cf.  Lipsius,  “ Der  Gnosticismus,”  pp.  105  ff.  ; Baur, 
“ Manichiiische  Religionssys.,”  pp.  404-493.  As  to  the  neo-Pythagoreans, 
there  is  an  interesting  discussion  in  Reville,  “ La  Religion  a Rome  sous 
les  Severes,”  pt.  ii. 


BEGIN  TO  ACT  ON  CHRISTIANITY. 


6l 


protect  their  rights,  husband  and  distribute  their  resources 
within  the  limits  of  the  Roman  law,  provincial  and  imperial. 
With  the  actual  and  organised  polity  must  also  be  taken  the 
theoretical,  the  philosophical  interpretation  and  expansion  of 
the  law  which  was  so  characteristic  of  the  Roman  jurists. 

3.  The  popular  religion  was  the  system  of  worship  which 
anywhere  prevailed,  whether  as  public  or  private,  an  affair 
of  the  city  and  temple  and  priesthood,  or  of  the  home  and 
the  mysteries.  The  period  was  a period  of  syncretism  ; the 
universalism  of  the  Empire  had  resulted  in  a mixture  of  all 
its  religions  ; the  old  deities  lived  no  more  within  their  ancient 
limits ; the  gods  of  Egypt  and  Syria,  of  Phrygia  and  Persia, 
of  East  and  West,  invaded  Rome,  and  in  their  train  came 
their  respective  worships.^  In  the  sphere  of  religion  a sort 
of  assimilative  or  encyclopaedic  frenzy  was  abroad,  and 
men  and  cities  did  not  feel  happy  or  safe  unless  they  had 
offered  hospitality  to  some  of  the  many  migrating  deities. 

Now,  Christianity  could  not  live  amid  these  varied  forces 
or  tendencies,  and  remain  unaffected  by  them.  Each  became 
a factor  of  distinct  yet  parallel  lines  of  thought, — philosophy 
affected  doctrine  ; polity,  organization  and  thought ; religion, 
cultus.  Ancient  philosophy  passed  into  theology ; Roman 
polity  survived  in  an  ecclesiastical,  which  was  too  wise  to 
disguise  its  true  descent ; and  the  old  religions  were  per- 
petuated in  the  new  worship.  Yet  they  did  not  all  operate 
with  equal  or  uniform  force  within  the  same  areas.  The 
theological  development  was  most  active  within  what  had 
been  the  home  of  philosophy,  the  countries  of  Greek  speech 
and  blood  ; the  political  was  at  first  richest  in  Syria, but 

^ Reville,  “ La  Religion  a Rome  sous  les  Severes,”  pt.  i. 

2 For  the  irregular  distribution  in  the  growth  of  episcopacy,  see  Light- 
foot’s  essay  on  “The  Christian  Ministry,”  206 ff.  His  examination  of  the 
causes  of  its  early  development  in  Syria  and  Asia  Minor  seems  inadequate 
and  partial.  The  tendency  had  rather  a common  and  native  than  a personal 
origin,  and  the  persons  involved  are,  save  in  one  case,  little  better  than 
mythical. 


62 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  THEOLOGY  : 


was  later  perfected  in  the  West,  mainly  in  and  through 
Rome ; the  religious  was  more  uniform  in  its  operations, 
though  as  varied  in  its  elements  as  were  the  cults  within  the 
Empire.  These  factors  did  not  indeed  in  any  sense  generate 
the  life  of  the  society,  but  they  determined  the  forms  that  its 
life  assumed.  In  their  collective  and  correlated  action  they 
by  a twofold  process  secured  its  naturalization  as  a citizen  of 
the  world — a process,  on  the  one  hand,  of  interpenetration, 
and,  on  the  other,  of  mediation  and  reconcilement.  It  is  the 
one  because  the  other ; the  old  and  the  new  faiths  inter- 
penetrate that  the  new  religion  may  the  better  win  and 
master  the  ancient  mind.  Catholicism  is  the  interpretation 
of  the  Christian  idea  in  the  terms  and  through  the  associa- 
tions of  the  ancient  world,  and  as  such  represents  on  the 
largest  scale  the  continuity  of  religion  in  history.  Its  work 
was  a needed  work,  for  -man  is  incapable  of  transitions  at 
once  sudden  and  absolute  ; the  construction  of  Christianity 
through  the  media  of  the  older  philosophies  and  religions 
was  a necessary  prelude  to  its  construction  by  a spirit  and 
through  a consciousness  of  its  own  creation.  The  absolute 
ideal  had,  in  order  to  be  intelligible,  to  use  constituted  and 
familiar  vehicles,  but  only  that  it  might  win  the  opportunity 
of  fashioning  vehicles  worthier  of  its  nature  and  fitter  for 
its  end. 


§ II. — Ancient  Philosophy  and  Theology. 

But  “ factor  ” is  a very  ambiguous  and  elastic  term,  and  so 
it  may  be  as  well  here  to  define  the  idea  it  is  meant  to 
denote.  This  can  best  be  done  by  the  discussion  of  the 
concrete  question.  In  what  sense  can  Greek  philosophy  be 
described  as  a factor  of  Christian  theology?  Theology  is 
the  universe  construed  through  the  idea  of  God  ; philosophy 
is  the  universe  construed  through  the  idea  of  man,  but  man 
as  mind.  Theology  is  as  necessary  to  faith  as  philosophy 


HOW  RELATED  AND  HOW  DISTINGUISHED.  63 

to  reason.  If  a man  asks,  Why  and  what  am  I and  my 
universe  ? the  result  is  a philosophy ; if  a man  or  society 
asks,  What  does  the  truth  we  believe  mean?  the  result  is 
a theology.  Each  is  a science  of  being,  but  the  highest 
constructive  principle  of  the  science  is  in  the  one  case  the 
thought  or  consciousness  of  the  thinker ; in  the  other,  it 
is  his  highest  and  most  necessary  idea.  The  standpoint  is  in 
philosophy  subjective,  a particular  reason  is  made  determina- 
tive of  the  universal,  the  means  by  which  truth  is  to  be 
discovered  and  explicated  ; the  standpoint  in  theology  is 
objective,  a universal  intelligence  is  made  the  explanation  of 
the  intelligible  world  with  all  its  intellects  and  all  their 
mysteries.  This  distinction  shows  at  once  their  difference 
and  their  relation.  They  differ  because  theology  starts  with 
an  idea  which  philosophy  has  to  discover  and  define ; but 
they  are  related  because,  while  all  the  problems  of  theology 
do  not  emerge  in  philosophy,  all  those  of  philosophy  emerge 
in  theology,  though  in  a different  order  and  from  a changed 
point  of  view. 

Now,  the  relations  of  Greek  philosophy  and  Christian 
theology  illustrate  this  distinction.  These  relations  were 
both  historical  and  material.  In  history  the  philosophy 
preceded  the  theology  ; the  century  that  saw  the  one  begin 
to  be  saw  the  other  cease  from  being.  In  a sense  ancient 
philosophy  died  into  theology,  and  for  centuries  all  the  life 
it  had  was  in  this  form  and  under  this  name.  The  last  of 
the  Greek  philosophers  were  theologians,  Plotinus,  Porphyry, 
and  Proclus  quite  as  much  as  Clement,  Origen,  and  Dionysius. 
But  the  change  in  name  implied  a change  in  the  thing  named. 
The  new  theology  was  not  the  old  philosophy,  nor  can  the 
one  be  stated  in  the  terms  of  the  other  and  yet  remain  the 
same.  The  cause  of  the  difference  was  this  : beside  Greek 
philosophy  as  an  external  factor  of  theology  two  internal 
factors  must  be  placed — Hebrew  religion  and  Christian 
history.  The  philosophy  determined  all  that  was  formal  in 


64 


HEBREW  RELIGION  CHANGES 


the  problems  to  be  solved,  and  supplied  the  speculative 
faculty,  the  dialectical  temper,  the  logical  and  evidential 
method,  and  the  scholastic  terminology  needed  for  their 
solution.  The  religion  gave  the  material  theistic  ideas,  the 
historical  perspective  required  for  their  concrete  being,  and 
the  literature  by  which  they  could  be  illustrated  and  verified. 
The  history  furnished  the  Person  and  events  which  alone 
could,  by  being  interpreted,  interpret  the  ideas  and  turn  the 
highest  of  all  theological  into  the  most  fundamental  of  all 
philosophical  questions.  It  was  by  virtue  of  the  rc'igious 
and  historical  factors  that  the  new  theology  differed  from  the 
ancient  philosophy. 

The  action  of  Hebrew  religion  was  the  earlier  and  pre- 
paratory, qualifying  philosophy  for  the  new  work  it  had  to 
do.  The  philosophies  that  had  owed  their  being  to  the 
Greek  genius  were  made  in  the  image  of  Greek  man,  but 
even  he  had  too  narrow  a humanity  behind  and  around  as 
well  as  within  him  to  be  just  to  man  universal,  and  so  his 
systems  had  feeling  enough  for  the  Hellenic  individual  and 
State,  but  not  for  mankind,  collective  and  historical.  They 
were  too  appreciative  of  the  philosophers  who  ought  to 
govern  to  be  just  to  the  manhood  which  needed  government. 
They  started  outside  religion,  and  became  religious  only  by 
force  of  reason  and  in  its  terms.  Their  theistic  conception 
was  metaphysical  rather  than  ethical,  never  even  in  its 
ethics  transcending  metaphysics,  ever  remaining  an  object 
of  contemplation  or  thought,  never  becoming  an  object  of 
worship  and  conscience.  In  other  words,  the  Deity  was 
reached  through  subjective  criticism,  and  had  all  the  qualities 
of  an  objectified  idea.  He  was  more  impersonal  than  per- 
sonal, a regulative  notion  rather  than  a conscious  reason  and 
an  active  will.  This  was  equally  true  whether  the  Divine 
was  with  Plato  conceived  under  the  form  of  the  Good  or 
the  True,  or  with  Aristotle,  of  the  End  or  the  Reason,  or  with 
the  Stoic,  of  Law  or  the  immanent  Order.  The  universe 


PHILOSOPHY  INTO  THEOLOGY. 


65 


interpreted  was  in  a sense  as  limited  as  the  interpreting 
manhood.  Now,  to  this  most  specifically  Greek  philosophy 
Hebrew  religion  came,  and  by  filling  it  with  the  idea  of  a 
living  God  gave  it  a larger  life,  a nobler  and  vaster  outlook. 
This  God  was  what  no  Greek  deity,  so  far  forth  as  a 
religious  being,  had  been  conceived  to  be — the  creator  of  all 
things,  the  ruler  of  all  men.  He  was  no  pale  abstraction  or 
personalized  idea,  but  a conscious  will  which  moved  in  all 
things  and  lived  in  all,  one  and  personal,  ethical  and  infinite. 
The  man  who  brought  the  two  together  was  Philo.  As  a 
philosopher  he  cannot  be  compared  with  Plato,  but  for  the 
history  of  religion  and  religious  thought  he  is  even  more 
important.  Two  streams  meet  in  him,  and  flow  henceforth 
in  a common  bed.  From  the  moment  that  he  attempted  to 
unite  Israel  and  Greece,  Moses  and  Plato,  the  prophets  and 
the  philosophers,  a new  goal  was  set  before  the  reason,  and 
philosophy  struggled  towards  theology.  The  men  who  came 
after  him  were  not  as  the  men  who  went  before  ; he  made 
neo-Platonic  and  Christian  speculation  alike  possible,  and 
these  two  agree  in  the  very  point  that  distinguishes  both  from 
the  older  Platonism  ; it  was  a philosophy,  they  are  theologies. 
And  just  where  they  agree,  and  because  of  their  agreement, 
modern  is  different  from  ancient  thought.  God  holds  a place 
in  all  systems  subsequent  to  Philo  such  as  He  had  never 
held  in  those  prior  to  him.  And  this  point  of  distinction 
is  a sign  of  pre-eminence.  For  the  thinker  who  seeks  to 
construe  man  and  history  through  the  idea  of  the  one  moral 
and  personal  Deity,  attempts  a grander  and  more  rational 
^ problem  than  is  possible  to  him  who  would  read  the  universe 
through  even  Hellenic  man.  For  the  universe  must  be  so 
conceived  as  to  be  worthy  of  its  God,  the  God  so  conceived 
as  to  be  equal  to  all  the  needs  of  His  universe.  Where  He 
runs  through  all  history,  its  periods  must  exhibit  reason  and 
law.  Where  He  is  equally  related  to  all  men  they  must  all 
be  equal  in  lowliness  and  in  dignity  before  Him.  In  their 

5 


66 


THEOLOGY  GROWS  LESS  TRADITIONAL, 


very  differences  they  must  be  akin,  all  their  truths  and  all 
their  religions  be  of  Him  and  through  Him.  All  is  sublimer 
and  vaster  interpreted  through  a universal  God  than  through 
the  Greek  ideal  of  man,  sublime  though  it  be. 

§ HI— Christian  History  and  Theology. 

But  while  Hebrew  religion  enlarged  and  enriched  all  the 
problems  of  philosophy,  the  Christian  history  made  them 
much  more  concrete,  imperious,  and  acute.  This  history 
must  be  understood  to  mean  both  the  creative  Person  and 
the  sacred  literature  which  described  at  once  His  actual  being 
and  ideal  significance.  It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  the  place 
of  this  literature  ; the  rise  of  a coherent  and  comprehensive 
theology  was  coincident  with  its  recognition  and  a symbol 
of  its  function  and  power.  The  remarkable  phenomena  that 
meet  us  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  century,  before 
the  literature,  as  distinct  from  tradition,  had  made  its 
collective  appeal  to  mind,  continue  into  the  middle  and 
even  towards  the  end.  Apostolic  Christianity  is  not  appre- 
hended as  a whole,  and  so  tar  as  its  parts  are  apprehended 
they  are  apprehended  only  in  part.  It  has  all  the  defects  of 
an  apprehension  attained  through  tradition  and  in  fragments 
by  the  unprepared  and  undisciplined  mind,  unexercised  and 
uncorrected  by  the  study  of  a normative  sacred  literature. 
The  apologists  are  not  strictly  Christian  theologians  ; their 
thought  is  Christian,  they  exhibit  Christianity  in  process  of 
assimilation  by  philosophical  minds,  but  the  last  thing  that 
can  be  claimed  for  them  is  that  their  theology  is  Apostolic. 
In  Justin  there  is  much  more  of  Plato  than  of  Paul ; indeed, 
we  may  say  he  is  often  as  antipathetic  to  the  one  as  he  is 
sympathetic  with  the  other.^  But  when  we  come  to  the  end 

^ There  is  a careful  and  judicial  discussion  of  Justin’s  relation  to  Paul 
in  Engelhard!,  “Das  Christenthum  Justin's,”  pp.  352-369.  Cf.  exposition 
of  the  opposed  views  in  Ritschl,  “Altkath.  Kirche,”  pp.  303  ff. ; and  Baur, 
“ Kirchengesch.  der  drei  erst.  Jahrhs.,”  140,  Eng.  trans.,  vol.  i.,  p.  147. 


MORE  BIBLICAL  AND  ADEQUATE. 


67 


of  the  century  we  find  men  who  have  stood  face  to  face 
with  the  Christian  history,  and  endeavoured  to  construe  the 
literature.  Irenaeus  is  not  a philosopher,  but  a Biblical  theo- 
logian, the  first  of  the  kind,  with  the  Christ  and  not  the 
Logos  as  the  centre  of  his  system.  Many  things  had  gone 
to  his  making  ; he  had  learned  from  his  early  masters  how 
to  love  and  follow  the  truth,  how  to  treasure  the  words  of 
the  holy  and  the  good,  from  the  Gnostics  how  to  value  the 
intellect  in  religion,  from  Marcion  how  to  make  a direct 
appeal  to  the  Scriptures,  yet  what  to  avoid  in  making  this 
appeal ; but  most  of  all  he  had  been  formed  by  his  study  of 
the  Apostolic  mind.  He  is  the  earliest  example  of  what  has 
been  illustrated  often  since — that  for  the  Christian  spirit  there 
is  no  secret  of  rejuvenescence  like  a bath  in  the  original 
sources.  But  tradition  enfeebled  and  obscured  his  vision. 
Though  steeped  in  Paul,  and  owing  to  him  his  noblest  and 
most  characteristic  ideas — the  the  unities 

which  he  opposes  to  the  Gnostic  dualisms,  the  unity  of  God, 
of  the  person  of  Christ,  of  the  human  race,  of  history,  of 
the  purpose  of  God  and  the  plan  of  salvation,  of  the  Church 
— yet  he  often  misses  or  fails  to  read  aright  the  Apostle’s 
mind,  or  even  quite  perverts  it.^  Tertullian  and  Clement,  each 
in  his  own  way,  illustrate  the  same  truth,  but  Origen  more 
than  either.  He  is  a Christian  thinker  because  a Biblical 
scholar.  With  him  constructive  theology  begins  to  be,  and 
it  was  but  fit  that  the  most  learned  of  all  the  Fathers  should 

* Proof  of  this  position  would  require  a more  detailed  exposition  than  is 
here  possible,  but  the  points  we  should  emphasize  are  these : — What  we 
may  term  the  residuary  dualism  which,  in  spite  of  his  loved  unities,  still 
works  within  his  theistic  conception,  his  whole  doctrine  of  the  devil,  with 
his  established  and,  as  it  were,  recognized  place  over  against  God,  and 
the  consequent  external  and  adventitious  doctrines  of  sin  and  redemption ; 
the  related  legalism  in  his  conception  of  the  Gospel,  which  makes  it  not  so 
much  a fulfilment  as  an  enlargement  and  republication  of  law,  involving  a 
most  unapostolic  prominence  to  the  institutional  as  distinguished  from  the 
fiduciary  element  in  Christianity  ; his  views  as  to  forgiveness  and  grace,  his 
tendency  through  inadequate  appreciation  of  what  they  mean  to  de-ethicize 


68 


THE  PROBLEMS  OF  CHRISTIAN  HISTORY 


also  be  the  first  systematic  theologian  and  the  source  of  the 
most  fruitful  ideas  in  Greek  patristic  thought. 

Now,  this  Christian  history  was  transacted,  as  it  were, 
within  the  Hebrew  religion,  and  incorporated  its  most  funda- 
mental ideas  ; nay,  appeared  as  its  historical  end  and  final 
cause.  As  such  it  came  to  the  philosophy  which  had  already 
become  theological,  demanding  to  be  interpreted  and  ex- 
plained. But  to  attempt  this  was  to  read  the  universe  and 
all  its  mysteries  from  an  entirely  new  point  of  view.  Here 
was  Christ  born  as  all  men  are,  said  to  be  the  Son  of 
man,  yet  no  man’s  son.  Son  of  God,  second  Adam,  source 
of  a new  race.  Saviour  of  men, — how,  then,  was  He  to  be 
conceived  alike  as  regards  His  nature.  His  person,  and  His 
relation  to  God  and  man?  Two  things  were  necessary: 
His  person  must  be  held  a historical  reality,  and  must  be 
so  construed  as  to  make  God  more  real,  living,  credible, 
than  He  had  been  either  in  Greek  philosophy  or  Hebrew 
religion.  The  history  could  not  be  allegorized  or  the  Person 
evaporated  into  a semblance,  resolved  into  a phantasm 
of  the  imagination  or  a freak  of  nature.  Allegory  was  well 
known  to  the  current  philosophies,  especially  the  Stoic  and 
neo-Platonic.  By  its  help  the  most  offensive  incidents  in 
the  ancient  mythologies  had  become  symbolical  of  hidden 
sciences  or  rarest  moral  wisdom.  Philo  had  known  it,  and 
so  used  it  as  to  bring  out  of  the  Mosaic  histories  the  philoso- 
phies of  Greece.  The  Christian  Fathers  followed  the  fashion 
of  their  day,  and  found  both  history  and  nature  rich  in 
allegory  and  ideal  symbolisms.  But  they  could  not  use  this 
pi  availing  fashion  to  turn  their  sacred  history  into  vehicles 

the  great  Pauline  ideas,  and  by  emphasizing  the  accidents  to  lose  the  very 
essence  of  the  dvaK€<pa\ai<i}(Tis.  If  we  regard  his  historical  position  and 
function,  we  must  speak  of  his  importance  in  very  bold  and  clear  terms  ; 
but  he  is  in  the  history  of  doctrine  simply  a scholar  who  has  with  mingled 
success  and  failure  tried  to  take  up  a dropped  line  of  development.  Cf.  the 
monograph  of  Werner  (which  is,  however,  rather  one-sided  and  so  unjust), 
“Der  Paulinismus  des  Irenaeus,”  in  Texte  und  Untersch.,  vol.  vi.,  and 
Lipsius,  “ Irenaeus,”  in  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography. 


CREATE  CHRISTIAN  THEOLOGY. 


69 


for  their  own  too  luxuriant  ideas.  If  the  Person  was  not  real, 
reality  could  not  belong  to  anything  He  did  or  said  ; but  if 
He  was  real,  then  His  history  must  be  the  same.  The  reality 
of  the  Person  and  the  integrity  of  the  history  thus  stood 
together  as  complementary  and  co-essential  elements  of  the 
truth.  But  neither  the  Person  nor  His  history  could  be,  as  it 
were,  cut  out  of  the  bosom  of  humanity.  As  the  Son  of  man 
His  roots  were  in  the  whole  past  of  man  collective ; as 
Creator  and  Head  of  the  new  mankind  His  branches  must 
reach  into  all  the  future ; as  Son  of  God  His  organic  relations 
to  all  the  universe  were  completed  by  relations  to  the  God 
whose  Son  He  was. 

Now,  out  of  this  history  with  its  necessary  implications  came 
a multitude  of  problems,  subtler,  more  penetrating,  more 
masterful,  charged  with  more  vital  moral  energy  and  meta- 
physical meaning  than  any  ancient  philosophy  had  known. 
If  God  had  a Son,  in  what  sense  was  the  Son  Son,  and  God 
Fatlicr?  Did  the  Son  begin  to  be?  If  He  did  not,  then  is 
He  not  the  equal  of  the  Father  and  as  old  as  He  ? How, 
then,  can  He  be  Son  any  more?  And  does  His  necessary  and 
eternal  being  mean  that  we  have  two  Gods  and  not  simply  one  ? 
But  if  He  did  begin  to  be,  then  He  must  have  been  created  ; 
and  how  do  Son  and  creature,  or  Sonship  and  creation,  differ  ? 
Then,  if  He  had  necessary  being  with  God,  yet  became  man, 
did  not  this  place  God  in  organic  relations  with  man  collec- 
th'e  as  he  lived  his  life  in  all  times  and  all  places.  If 
God’s  Son  was  part  of  this  race — rooted  in  its  past^  living  in 
a recent  present,  creating  its  future — then  to  this  race  God 
must  be  bound,  He  in  some  sense  also  its  Father,  it  in  some 
sense  His  Son.  If  one  who  had  lived  as  Son  of  man  was  yet 
Son  of  God,  then  how  were  God  and  man  related  ? in  what 
sense  were  they  akin  ? in  what  sense  different  ? Are  all  the 
sons  of  men,  as  was  this  Son  of  man,  sons  of  God  ? And  if 
they  differ,  can  they  belong  to  the  same  orders  of  being — He 
man  as  they  are  men,  or  they  as  He  is  ? Then  does  not  an 


. 70  THE  QUESTIONS  OF  TWO  KINDS. 

organic  relation  of  God  to  the  race  imply  that  the  race  is 
an  organism  with  its  every  unit  connected  with  every  other, 
and  all  with  its  Father  or  Head?  If  God  and  the  Son  of 
God  are  thus  connected  with  the  race,  what  is  their  relation  to 
evil  ? how  has  it  come  to  be  ? how  is  its  being  to  be  ended  ? 
And  what  is  the  relation  to  it  of  the  organism  as  a whole 
and  of  all  its  several  units?  What  was  man’s  primary, 
what  is  to  be  his  ultimate  relation  to  the  Father?  And  as 
regards  these  relations,  what  function  has  the  Son  and  His 
being  in  time? 

Such  were  some  of  the  questions  raised  by  the  Christian 
history,  and  it  would  be  hard  to  find  in  the  whole  realm  of 
thought  problems  at  once  more  essentially  philosophical 
or  more  vitally  theological.  They  fall  into  two  classes : 
those  specially  concerned  with  God,  the  Son  of  God,  His 
relation  to  God  and  man,  the  constituents  and  function 
of  His  person ; and  those  specially  concerned  with  man, 
as  a unit  and  as  a race,  his  relation,  individual  and  collective, 
to  God,  to  sin,  and  to  salvation.  The  former  were  ques- 
tions in  theology,  and  became  the  distinctive  problems  of 
the  Greek  Church  ; the  latter  were  questions  in  anthropology, 
and  became  the  problems  characteristic  of  the  Latin.  The 
choice  was  not  accidental,  nor  without  a reason  in  history. 
The  theology  found  its  organon  in  Greek  metaphysics, 
especially  as  then  cultivated  in  the  eclectic  schools,  and 
continued  under  new  relations  problems  they  had  for  cen- 
turies discussed ; the  anthropology  had  in  Roman  law, 
qualified  and  interpreted  by  Stoicism,  its  fit  formative 
medium. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE  GREEK  MIND  AND  THEOLOGY. 

§ I— Two  Minds  and  Two  Churches. 

The  distinction  just  indicated  is  of  significance  enough 
to  justify  more  detailed  discussion.  It  will  help  us 
the  better  to  understand  the  persistence  of  the  classical  in  the 
Christian  mind,  and  show  how  through  the  former  the  latter 
achieved  some  of  its  most  characteristic  results.  Thought 
was  as  active  in  the  West  as  in  the  East,  but  had  other 
interests  and  other  objects,  and,  as  a consequence,  other 
forms.  Law  was  distinctive  of  the  Latin  and  philosophy  of 
the  Greek  people  ; the  great  jurists  were  as  typical  of  Rome 
as  the  great  philosophers  were  typical  of  Greece.  All  the 
philosophy  of  the  West  was  derivative.  The  most  original 
Latin  philosopher  was  the  poet  who 

“ denied 

Divinely  the  Divine,” 

but  Lucretius  was  only  the  expositor  of  the  Grains  homo 
he  so  splendidly  praised.  The  philosophy  that  may  with 
best  reason  be  described  as  native  to  the  Romans  was 
Stoicism  ; but  though  it  had  a quite  specific  character  of  its 
own,  yet  it  was  not  a native  or  even  a naturalized  Roman 
philosophy.  With  Seneca  it  was  more  a literary  habit,  a 
mental  tendency,  a means  for  the  cultivation  of  character  than 
a reasoned  system  ; it  is  in  its  ethical  tone  and  form,  not 
in  its  intellectual  contents,  that  it  has  affinity  with  Paul’s. 


72 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  AND  ROMAN  LAW 


With  Marcus  Aurelius  it  was  Greek  in  form  and  source, 
though  Roman  in  spirit ; and  of  Epictetus  we  may  say  the 
same.  But  in  law  Rome  is  easily  pre-eminent,  and  the 
jurist  has  his  golden  age  in  the  second  and  third  centuries 
of  our  era.  His  jurisprudence,  indeed,  is  not  simply  positive 
and  consuetudinary,  but  is  penetrated  and  organized  by  great 
ideas,  illumined,  as  it  were,  by  the  light  of  nature.  Law  is 
not  simply  the  arbitrary  and  the  conventional,  but  is  what 
is  always  and  everywhere  equal  and  good.  To  know  it  is 
to  know  things  Divine  and  human,  just  and  unjust,  the  order 
constituted  of  nature  among  men.  The  jurists  have  thus  under 
their  law  a philosophy,  and  through  this  philosophy  they  seek 
to  read  and  interpret  the  law.  They  stand,  indeed,  upon  the 
actual,  the  positive,  the  instituted,  but  labour  to  bring  it  into 
harmony  with  the  ideal.  Yet  their  nature  is  the  nature 
of  the  jurist ; they  do  not  escape  his  categories.  The  function 
of  all  abstract  right  is  to  create  right  institutions  ; the  state 
organized  according  to  a Divine  idea  is  the  ultimate  achieve- 
ment of  Divine  wisdom.  The  quest,  then,  of  the  jurist  is 
order,  as  of  the  philosopher  truth ; what  thought  is  to  the 
one,  institutions  are  to  the  other.  If  the  philosopher  touches 
law,  it  is  that  he  may  incorporate  an  idea  ; if  the  jurist 
appeals  to  philosophy,  it  is  that  he  may  vindicate  or  inter- 
pret law.  What  the  one  seeks  is  the  interpretation  of  man 
and  his  universe  ; what  the  other  seeks  is  the  creation  of 
a well-ordered  state,  with  all  the  relations  of  man  to  man 
regulated  by  just  laws  justly  interpreted. 

Now,  the  contrast  between  Greek  philosophy  and  Roman 
law  is  repeated  and  reflected  in  the  contrast,  which  is  a 
commonplace  of  history,  between  the  Greek  and  Latin,  or 
Eastern  and  Western,  Churches.  Each  by  its  very  name 
bears  witness  to  the  supremacy  of  the  special  factor  that 
formed  it.  The  one  is  Orthodox,  the  other  Catholic  ; the 
note  of  the  first  is  its  theological  truth,  of  the  second 
its  imperial  and  continuous  and  comprehensive  polity,  ever 


IN  THE  GREEK  AND  ROMAN  CHURCH.  73 

enlarged  and  actualized  by  an  ever-living  law,  because  a law 
ever  anew  interpreted.  The  genius  that  made  philosophy 
the  creation  of  classical  Greece  made  theology  the  deter- 
minative basis  of  the  Greek  Church.  The  political  strength 
and  capacity  that  gave  to  Rome  the  sovereignty  of 
the  world,  the  juridical  and  forensic  genius  that  made  its 
law  almost  ideal,  developed  the  Roman  Church  into  the 
Catholic.  Each  became  what  it  did  through  the  past  it 
inherited.  Without  the  philosophers  the  Eastern  Church 
would  never  have  had  her  theologians ; without  the  Caesars 
and  their  jurists  the  Western  Church  would  never  have 
had  her  popes  and  canonists.  It  was  but  natural  that 
men  who  had  the  Greek  mind  or  who  had  come  under  its 
influence  should  construe  Christianity  through  the  categories 
of  the  reason,  and  feel  its  fitness,  as  it  were,  for  intellectual 
manipulation,  its  capability  of  being  formulated  in  the  terms 
of  the  intellect.  And  it  was  no  less  natural  that  men  who 
had  the  Roman  mind,  or  had  been  made  in  its  image  and 
inured  into  its  ambitions  and  ideals,  should  see  in  Chris- 
tianity a new  state,  a new  form  of  empire,  a new  method 
of  authority  and  rule.  Though  these  are  different,  yet  they 
are  not  opposites  ; nor  do  they  exclude  each  other.  Theo- 
logical ideas  could  not  live  or  be  formulated  and  enforced 
without  a polity ; the  polity  could  not  be  a coherent  and 
living  whole  unless  filled  and  organized  by  an  idea.  But 
in  each  case  the  determinative  principle  was  different — in 
the  one  case  a theology,  in  the  other  a polity.  In  the  East 
the  Church  is  to  be  obeyed  and  believed  because  she 
teaches  the  truth  ; in  the  West  the  truth  or  doctrine  is  to 
be  believed  because  defined,  delivered,  and  authenticated 
by  the  Church.  The  contrast  affects  the  very  form  and 
quality  of  the  doctrines.  The  system  native  to  the  Greek 
Church  is  a doctrine  of  God  and  the  Godhead  ; but  the 
system  native  to  the  Latin  is  a doctrine  of  man,  his  state 
and  constitution,  his  relations  and  duties,  government  and 


74 


CONTRAST  OF  THOUGHT  AND  SYSTEM, 


responsibilities,  individual  and  collective,  all  forensically  con- 
strued. The  Eastern  theology  was  accepted  by  the  West, 
but  with  a modification  or  change  (the  filioque)  which  showed 
its  feebler  metaphysical  ability  and  lower  speculative  stand- 
point ; the  Western  anthropology  was  never  accepted  by  the 
East,  and  was  to  it,  because  of  its  abiding  though  weakened 
Hellenic  ideal  of  man  and  the  city  or  state,  not  only  alien, 
but  incredible.  In  soteriology  the  Greek  notion  was  meta- 
physical and  personal,  and  so  found  its  centre  and  symbol 
in  the  Incarnation ; but  the  Latin  was  legal  and  forensic, 
and  so  emphasized  justification  and  atonement,  or  the  Incar- 
nation so  far  as  it  made  more  possible  the  apotheosis  of  the 
Church  and  its  Sacraments.  The  former  was  the  direct 
result  of  the  relations  between  God  and  man  being  conceived 
in  the  terms  of  a philosophy,  with  its  metaphysical  categories  ; 
the  latter  was  due  to  these  same  relations  being  construed 
in  the  terms  of  a polity,  with  its  principles  of  civil  and 
criminal  jurisprudence.  These  differences,  then,  are  neither 
superficial  nor  accidental,  but  are  fundamental  and  real,  due 
to  causes  that  are  as  old  as  Greece  and  as  Rome.  They 
do  not  belong  to  the  religion  that  came  to  the  men,  but 
to  the  men  who  came  to  the  religion,  and  who  made  it 
a continuation  in  the  one  case  of  the  thought  they  inherited, 
in  the  other  of  their  realized  polity  and  idealized  law. 

§ II. — The  Greek  and  Latin  Eathers. 

But  there  was  between  East  and  West  a contrast  of  person- 
ality and  character  no  less  than  of  thought  and  system.  The 
great  Fathers  of  the  East  were  theologians,  men  who  dealt  with 
the  facts  and  ideas  of  their  faith  in  the  method  of  the  philo- 
sopher and  in  the  terms  of  the  schools.  The  great  Fathers  of 
the  West  were  jurists  or  statesmen,  men  who  looked  at  their 
faith  through  the  associations  and  ideals  of  a society  governed 
by  constituted  authorities,  settled  customs  and  formal  laws, 


AND  OF  PERSONALITY  AND  CHARACTER. 


75 


This  does  not  mean  that  the  Greek  mind  was  philosophical 
but  not  practical,  the  Latin  practical  but  not  philosophical — a 
position  that  may  be  so  construed  as  to  be  either  a superficial 
truth  or  a fundamental  falsehood — for  in  Augustine  or  even 
in  Tertullian  there  is  as  much  philosophy  as  in  any  Greek 
Father,  while  in  pre-eminence  and  intellectual  influence  they 
have  no  rival  in  the  East,  unless  indeed  it  be  the  heretical 
Origen.  But  it  means  this — that  the  constructive  ideas  of  the 
Greek  Fathers  were  metaphysical,  of  the  Latin  political  and 
juristic.  Thus  with  the  Greek  apologists  as  a whole  Chris, 
tianity  was  fitted  into  a framework  of  Hellenic  and  Hellenistic 
speculation,  and  dealt  with  as  if  it  were  a philosophy  which 
differed  from  all  other  philosophies  only  in  being  revealed,  and 
so  truer  to  reason.  Aristides,  Justin,  Athenagoras,  did  not 
leave  off  either  the  garb  or  the  name  or  the  function  of  the 
philosopher.^  The  natural  parallel  of  Christ  was  Socrates, 
who  was  indeed  a Christian  before  Him.^  Pantsenus,  the  first 
known  head  of  the  Catechetical  School  of  Alexandria,  was 
educated  in  Stoicism.^  His  disciple  and  successor,  Clement, 
sees  in  philosophy  the  preparation  for  Christ,  holds  the  truth 
he  has  received  to  be  the  true  philosophy,  and  finds  perfection 
in  knowledge  rather  than  faith.^  Origen  was.  a scholar  of 
Clement,  and  a hearer  of  Ammonius,  and  educated  in  Greek 
studies,®  and  the  vivid  picture  of  him  as  a master  which  we 
owe  to  the  love  of  a pupil  shows  him  forbidding  no  subject, 
keeping  none  hidden  and  inaccessible,  that  he  might  the 
better  lead  through  heathen  to  Christian  philosophy.® 

Heraclas  and  Dionysius,  who  succeeded  Origen  in  the 
school,  were  one  with  him  in  mind  and  spirit  Athanasius 

^ Aristides,  “ Apol.,”  inscr.;  Justin,  “ Dial., ’T  ff. ; “Apol.,”  ii.  13;  Tatian 

Orat,”  3 1 32,  35.  4o. 

2 Justin,  “Apol.,”  II.  10,  I.  46. 

® Euseb.,  V.  10,  cf.  vi.  19. 

* Strom.,  i.  5,  §§  28,  32;  iv.  21-23;  vi.  14,  § I Hi  §§  115-123. 

® Euseb.,  vi.  18,  19,  cf.  14. 

^ Greg.  Tliaum.,  “ Orat.  de  Orig.,”  vi.-xv. 


76 


THE  PHILOSOPHER  AND  THE  JURIST  : 


had  carefully  studied  “ Plato  and  the  Greek  philosophers  in 
general,”  and  his  earliest  book  recalls  “ not  in  form  but 
in  essence  the  Platonic  dialogue.”^  The  eloquence  of  Basil 
and  Chrysostom  shows  the  influence  of  their  common  master 
Libanius,  while  the  School  of  Athens  left  its  mark  on  the 
minds  of  Basil  and  his  friend  Gregory,^  The  Apollinares, 
elder  and  younger,  studied  under  Epiphanius  of  Petra,  and 
were  excommunicated  in  consequence,  some  holding  pagan 
philosophy  injurious  to  true  religion.^  Theodore  of  Mop- 
suestia  was  also  a pupil  of  Libanius,  and  educated  in  rhetoric 
and  philosophy.^  The  neo-Platonism  of  Synesius  is,  to  say 
the  least,  as  real  as  his  Christianity,  while  it  was  not  without 
influence  on  the  asceticism  of  Isidore  of  Pelusium.  Indeed, 
of  the  Greek  Fathers  as  a whole  we  may  say  that  the 
influence  of  their  schools,  with  their  opposed  metaphysics, 
psychologies,  ethics,  can  be  quite  distinctly  traced  in  all 
their  controversies.  Dogma  in  their  hands  assumes  its  true 
philosophical  sense,  definition  is  made  to  play  the  same  part 
in  regard  to  it  and  to  knowledge  as  in  the  philosophical  sects, 
and  theology  is  as  much  concerned  with  right  thinking  as 
ever  philosophy  had  been. 

The  Latin  Fathers  stand  in  these  respects  in  marked  con- 
trast to  the  Greek.  Tertullian,  though  he  becomes  a Christian, 
yet  remains  in  thought  and  feeling  a Roman  lawyer  ; he 
loves  his  religion  because  it  is  so  unlike  philosophy,  and  can 
speak  with  so  much  authority.  The  more  this  authority 
insulted  the  pride  of  reason  the  more  he  loved  it ; “ credibile 
est,  quia  ineptum  est ; certum  est,  quia  impossible  est.”® 
Minucius  Felix  was  an  “insignis  causidicus  Romani  fori,”® 

^ Moehler,  “ Athanasius  der  Grosse,”  p.  io8. 

* Greg.  Naz.,  “ Orat.,”  xx. 

3 Socrates,  ii.  46,  cf.  iii.  16  ; Sozomen,  vi.  25. 

^ Sozomen,  viii.  2. 

® “De  Came  Christi,”  5.  The  “credo  quia  absurdum  ” does  not  occur  in 
Tertullian,  though  he  had  moods  when  it  would  have  expressed  his  mind. 

® Jerome,  “ De  Vir.  Illust.,”  Iviii. ; Lact.,  “ Inst.,”  v.  i. 


EACH  CHARACTERISTIC  OF  HIS  CHURCH. 


77 


and  his  Octavius  shows  us  how  empty  the  Roman  concep- 
tion of  Christianity  is  unless  clothed  in  institutional  forms.’ 
Callistus,  whatever  view  we  may  take  of  Hippolytus’  nar- 
rative,^ has  no  claim  to  remembrance  save  as  a man  of 
political  and  practical  gifts.  Cyprian,  orator  and  teacher 
of  rhetoric,  has  the  mind  of  a Roman  patrician,  and  is  a 
statesman  and  administrator,  one  we  can  only  describe  as 
the  first  prince  of  the  Church,  which  to  him,  as  to  all 
princes,  was  not  an  eKKXr^aia,  but  a civitas.  Hosius  is  the 
typical  diplomatic  bishop,  active  in  councils  and  courts,  but 
represented  in  literature  by  a solitary  letter  to  an  emperor.^ 
Ambrose  was  the  son  of  a Roman  praefect,  and  was  himself 
a lawyer  and  magistrate  before  he  became  a bishop.  The 
class  of  orators,  whose  training  and  models  were  as  distinctly 
legal  and  forensic  as  those  of  the  corresponding  class  in 
Greece  were  literary  and  philosophical,  furnished  the  names  of 
Arnobius,  Lactantius,  Victorinus  Afer,  and,  though  he  trans- 
cends all  such  categories,  Augustine  ; yet  he  may  be  cited 
as  the  palmary  example  of  the  philosophic  mind  governed 
by  the  political  idea.  The  Hilaries,  of  Poictiers  and  of  Arles, 
were  intended  for  secular  life,  and  only  later  assumed 
ecclesiastical  office.  Leo  the  Great  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  trained  in  the  heathen  philosophies  or  literatures,  while 
Gregory  the  Great  was  by  his  legal  studies  educated  for  his 
senatorial  rank  and  duties. 

Thus,  then,  in  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  the  characteristics 
of  East  and  West  appear — the  Greek  with  his  literary  and 
philosophical  ambitions,  the  Latin  with  his  forensic  and 
political.  The  sacred  literature  of  the  East  finds  its  ante- 
cedents and  models  in  the  schools  of  the  rhetors,  of  the 

’ The  Octavius  has  this  interest  for  us : it  is  the  nearest  Western 
parallel  to  the  Greek  apologies,  but  its  point  of  distinction  from  them  is 
its  deficiency  in  all  specifically  Christian  elements.  See  Kiihn,  Inaugural 
Dissertation,  “ Der  Octavius  des  Minucius  Felix”  (Leipzig,  1882). 

2 “Refut.  Omn.  Haeres.,”  ix.  ii  ff. 

® Cf.  Athanasius,  “ Hist.  Arianor.,”  44. 


78  THE  THEOLOGY  OF  THE  GREEK  CHURCH. 

West  in  the  eloquence  of  the  forum  and  the  bar.  The 
sophist  loved  to  distinguish  himself  by  his  skill  in  handling 
the  subtleties  of  logic  and  thought,  but  the  orator  by  his 
ability  so  to  argue  a cause,  real  or  imaginary,  as  to  gain  a 
verdict.  And  in  each  case  there  survived  in  the  new  subject 
the  old  method  with  all  its  categories,  making  the  new  spirit 
work  within  the  forms  created  by  the  old. 

§ III. — The  Greek  Theology. 

The  theology  of  the  Greek  Church  may,  then,  be  described 
as  the  last  characteristic  creation  of  the  Greek  genius.  It 
had  as  natural  a genesis  as  the  philosophy  in  which  it  was 
rooted  and  out  of  which  it  grew.  The  Hebrew  religion  and 
the  Christian  history  would  not  of  themselves  have  sufficed 
to  beget  or  evoke  this  theology.  Without  the  Greek  mind 
with  its  speculative  achievements  and  capabilities  it  could  not 
have  been  ; with  this  mind,  and  because  of  k,  the  theology 
could  not  but  be.  Philosophy  had  come  to  be  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  Greek  spirit ; to  it  the  question  was  a thing 
of  nature,  the  cultivation  of  centuries  had  trained  it  to  inquire, 
to  speculate,  to  seek  causes,  to  discover  ends,  or  examine 
and  determine  means — in  a word,  to  philosophize.  It  had 
tried  many  lines  of  thought,  had  vigorously  developed  single 
principles  into  elaborate  systems,  and  now  in  despair  of  truth 
from  any  one  school  was  seeking  it  by  combining  elements 
from  all.  In  its  earliest  speculative  period  it  had  attempted 
to  explain  nature  in  natural  terms,  but  did  not  find  that 
nature  grew  more  intelligible  by  water  or  air,  fire  or  atoms, 
being  made  the  mother  of  all  things.  Anaxagoras  had  come, 
“ the  sober  man  among  drunkards,”  and  bidden  reason  mix  the 
elements  ; and  then  Socrates  had  collected  the  evidence  of  its 
action,  Plato  had  speculated  as  to  the  creative  relation  of  the 
permanent  and  ideal  to  the  transitory  and  real,  Aristotle  had 
tried  to  discover  an  intelligible  order  within  the  actual,  a reason 


THE  CREATION  OF  THE  GREEK  GENIUS. 


79 


and  an  end  that,  unmoved,  moved  all  things.  The  philosophy 
that  had  begun  as  an  attempt  to  explain  nature  had  cul- 
minated in  the  attempt  to  formulate  the  notion  of  its  cause. 
And  precisely  at  this  point  was  found  its  supreme  difficulty, 
yet  imperious  necessity  ; for  it  was  by  the  attempt  to  formu- 
late this  conception  that  the  successive  Greek  philosophies 
had  lived,  and,  failing,  had  died.  And  the  difficulty  was 
not  lessened  but  rather  increased  by  Hebrew  religion  and 
the  Christian  history,  while  the  necessity  was  made  more 
imperious.  God  indeed  was  not  now  to  be  reached  through 
nature;  rather  thought  was  to  start  with  Him,  and  nature  was 
to  be  read  through  God  and  God  through  the  history ; but 
what  did  this  mean  save  that  a new  theology,  a science  of 
God  through  the  history  and  a science  of  the  universe  through 
God,  must  be  attempted  ? But  did  not  such  a theology 
already  exist  in  the  sacred  literature?  True,  a theology  was 
there,  but  it  wanted  adaptation  or  relation  to  the  new  mind. 
It  lived  in  an  element  of  emotion,  of  spiritual  apprehension, 
of  religious  reminiscence  and  association  that  had  not  yet 
become  native  to  the  Gentile  Christian.  God  was  presented 
as  a religious  idea,  but  the  demand  was  for  a scientific 
conception.  The  minds  that  made  the  New  Testament  were 
penetrated  with  Him  ; they  lived  and  thought  as  in  His 
presence  ; they  had  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  His  relation  to 
them  or  theirs  to  Him,  or  in  believing  that  He  was  the  personal 
Creator,  Sovereign,  Father  of  men  ; in  a word,  their  God  was 
religious,  not  metaphysical,  revealed  in  the  sweet  light  of  faith, 
not  hidden  in  the  dark  definitions  of  the  schools.  But  to 
the  Greek  mind  God,  as  distinguished  from  the  gods,  was 
primarily  metaphysical  ; He  was  Being,  abstract  and  infinite, 
found  and  defined  by  thought,  at  once  its  supreme  necessity 
and  difficulty.  Without  Him  an  intelligible  world  could  not 
be  conceived  ; but  then  it  was  even  harder  to  conceive  how  He 
as  infinite  could  be  related  to  the  finite,  as  perfect  could  be 
in  contact  with  evil,  as  above  all  time  and  space,  and  yet 


8o 


THE  THEOLOGY  CONTINUES,  COMPLETES, 


existing  in  their  forms  and  under  their  categories.  To  the 
two  minds  God  was  a very  different  being ; the  difficulty  of 
the  Apostolic  mind  was  how  to  do  without  Him,  the  difficulty 
of  the  Greek  mind  was  how  to  bring  Him  into  the  terms 
of  a rational  and  coherent  conception.  And  the  difficulty 
was  enormously  increased  by  the  new  elements  which  the 
Christian  history  had  introduced  ; yet  how  could  this  history 
be  believed  unless  it  could  be  so  construed  as  to  leave  God 
intelligible  to  an  intelligence  made  by  centuries  of  speculation 
a sort  of  organized  yet  automatic  metaphysic?  and  how 
could  God  be  invested  with  religious  significance  unless  by 
being,  as  it  were,  vitalized  and  transfigured  by  this  history  ? 

The  scientific  character,  then,  and  antecedents  of  the  Greek 
mind  were  such  that  a scientific  theology  was  necessary  to  it 
and  necessary  in  proportion  to  its  very  difficulty.  If  God  was 
to  live  in  faith,  He  must  be  made  to  live,  intelligible  and 
reasonable,  for  thought,  in  harmony  with  the  history  on  the 
one  hand,  and  nature  and  man  on  the  other.  Certain  things 
were  in  limine  evident.  He  must  remain  sole,  sovereign, 
one,  neither  multiplied  nor  lowered  nor  divided.  No  return 
to  the  mythological  deities  was  possible ; they  were  only 
personalized  forces  or  passions,  mixed  in  nature,  promiscuous 
in  intercourse,  with  an  innumerable  progeny,  here  of  gods,  there 
of  men.  Nor  must  there  be  any  return  to  the  old  Judaic 
Deism  ; there  God  and  the  world  were  so  divided  that  it  in 
a sense  perished  in  His  presence  and  lived  only  by  His  will. 
As  a monotheism  it  was  cancelled  by  the  political  restrictions 
of  the  religion — for  a God  limited  to  a single  people  cannot  be 
the  only  God — and  as  a theism  it  was  denied  by  the  absence 
of  all  recognition  as  to  any  organic  relation  between  God  and 
man.  If,  now,  Christian  thought  could  neither  fall  back  into  a 
kind  of  classical  mythology  allegorically  construed,  nor  into 
a Judaic  Deism,  which  would  have  dissolved  or  negatived 
all  the  real  or  characteristic  elements  in  its  own  history,  then 
there  remained  for  it  only  a third  course — it  must  advance  to 


AND  REFLFXTS  GRFFK  PHILOSOPHY. 


8l 


such  a new  conception  of  Deity  as  would  enable  it  to  main- 
tain His  unity,  yet  His  organic  connection  with  man  as 
Sovereign,  Saviour,  and  Judge.  And  the  only  way  in  which 
this  advance  could  be  made  was  by  the  old  dialectic,  the 
use  of  the  old  logical  instrument  and  means.  The  result  was 
the  formation  of  those  doctrines  of  the  Godhead  and  the 
Incarnation  which  we  owe  to  the  speculative  genius  of  the 
Greek  theologians. 

This  theology,  then,  viewed  under  its  formal  aspect  and  in 
relation  to  its  formative  factors,  must  be  conceived  as  a 
continuation  and  expansion  of  Greek  philosophy.  It  is  the 
attempt  of  the  Greek  mind  to  formulate  the  new  theistic  idea, 
to  construct  in  its  peculiar  method  and  by  its  distinctive 
terminology  a reasonable  and  reasoned  theory  of  the  new 
material  that  had  come  to  it  as  a religion  and  in  a history. 
All  the  phenomena  that  attend  the  genesis  and  formulation 
of  philosophical  theories  attend  the  genesis  of  this.  It  comes 
into  being  by  a process  of  development,  explicative  of  the 
idea,  determinative  of  the  form.  The  very  process  that  is  ex- 
hibited in  the  history  of  Greek  philosophy  as  a whole,  and  in 
each  of  the  great  Greek  schools,  is  repeated  here.  At  first 
the  idea  is  imperfectly  apprehended  ; it  is  mixed  with  old 
yet  alien  elements  ; its  meaning  and  bearings  are  not  dis- 
tinctly discerned  ; then  under  discussion  it  grows  clearer, 
under  analysis  purer,  through  experience  more  vivid  and 
real.  Attempts  at  formulation  break  down,  now  because  too 
general,  now  because  not  general  enough,  till  a special  ter- 
minology is  created,  and  a consensus  secured.  But  out  of 
the  very  formulation  new  questions  rise,  which  divide  the 
school  into  sections,  each  repeating  the  process  till  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  philosophy  are  exhausted,  and  inquiry  or 
speculation  must  proceed  on  other  lines  to  other  and  more 
scientific  results.  Thus  had  philosophy  developed,  and  so 
did  theology  now.  The  theology  of  the  Apostolic  Fathers  is 
mainly  one  of  reminiscence;  they  repeat  what  they  have  heard 

6 


82 


GNOSTICS  THE  FIRST  THEOLOGIANS  ; 


or  read,  yet  often  so  as  to  show  that  they  have  either  not  heard 
aright  or  not  fully  understood.  The  Gnostics  are  the  first 
theologians  ; their  speculations  are  absurd  enough  as  they  lie, 
unfolded  by  the  hand  of  the  enemy,  in  the  pages  of  Irena^us 
and  Hippolytus  ; but  they  had  a reason  in  them  which  the 
Fathers  have  carefully  not  allowed  us  to  see.  They  attempted 
to  translate  the  Christian  history  into  an  ethical  cosmology. 
They  did  not  love  evil,  but  they  loved  God,  especially  as  an 
object  of  speculation,  and  they  laboured  so  to  separate  God 
from  the  world  as  to  save  Him  from  all  participation  in 
its  evil.  All  that  was  of  sense  was  sin,  all  that  was  of 
spirit  was  good  ; the  movement  downward  to  sense  was  the 
fall,  the  movement  upward  to  spirit  was  redemption.  This 
was  instituted  by  the  ^on  Christ,  and  in  order  to  do  it 
He  entered  into  the  man  Jesus.  These  two  were  distinct 
and  different.  Jesus  belonged  to  the  world  of  sense  and 
suffering,  which  was  evil  ; Christ  to  the  realm  of  spirit  and 
knowledge,  which  was  good.  The  theory  made  the  historical 
person  of  Christ  unreal,  with  all  its  events,  especially  the 
Passion  and  Death,  God  an  inaccessible  monad,  existence 
a perplexed  dualism.  Creator,  creation  and  its  history,  all 
evil,  escape  from  sense  the  one  real  good  ; but  it  showed 
the  necessity  of  a constructive  doctrine  of  Christ  and 
Christianity  based  on  the  New  Testament,  and  not  simply 
on  the  Old.  The  Apologists  approached  the  matter  from 
another  side  ; they  began  with  the  history ; it  was  real, 
veracious,  but  it  was  the  history  of  a teacher,  the  record 
of  a philosophy,  Jesus  was  the  second  and  perfect  Socrates, 
giving  the  truth  to  man.  But  their  limitations  came  out 
when  they  attempted  to  determine  His  relations  to  God. 
In  Him  the  Logos  became  flesh,  but  this  Logos  was  a sort 
of  cosmological  principle,  a means  of  mediating  in  a philo- 
sophical sense  between  God  as  the  object  and  man  as  the 
subject  of  knowledge,  akin  to  man  who  participates  in  Him, 
akin  to  God  whom  He  makes  articulate.  He  was  thus  needed 


THEN  APOLOGISTS  AND  CATHOLIC  FATHERS.  83 

rather  to  enable  God  to  do  His  work  and  reveal  Himself,  and 
man  to  find  God  and  know  His  truth,  than  to  save  from  sin. 
They  did  not  make  their  monotheism  and  history  so  inter- 
penetrate as  to  produce  a theology  of  salvation.  Irenaeus, 
as  became  a Biblical  theologian,  was  more  soteriological. 
Christ  is  the  Son  of  God,  in  Him  the  Divine  and  human 
natures  are  united  ; but  he  expressly  declines  to  philosophize 
as  to  the  relations  these  terms  imply,  and  leaves  us  at  the 
critical  point  with  unrelated  and  unarticulated  ideas.  Ter- 
tullian,  who,  though  Latin,  has  here  great  significance  for 
Greek  thought,  is  bolder ; he  sees,  as  Irenaeus  had  done, 
that  salvation  must  be  as  real  as  creation,  and  therefore 
the  Redeemer  must  be  as  Divine  as  the  Creator  ; but  he 
attempts,  as  Irenaeus  did  not,  to  formulate  a conception  of 
God  which  shall  reconcile  plurality  with  unity.  “Unitas,” 
he  says,  “ inrationaliter  collecta  haeresim  facit,  et  trinitas 
rationaliter  expensa  veritatem  constituit”  ^ But  when  he 
comes  to  expound  his  Trinity  it  turns  out  to  be  not 
essential,  but  oeconomical,  a matter  of  disposition  in  order 
to  administration.^  The  Son  once  was  not,  is  derivative,  a 
portion  of  the  Divine  essence,  “ secundus  a Deo  constitutus.”  ^ 
But  this  olKovofiia  or  administrative  unity  seemed  a clumsy 
expedient ; was  it  not  simpler  to  say,  “ God  is  one  ; it  is 
the  same  person  who  now  reigns  as  Father,  now  suffers 
as  Son  ? So  said  the  Patripassian  ; but  does  not  the  One 
so  construed  make  the  Incarnation  impossible,  and  the 
history  a semblance,  while  there  can  be  nothing  in  God 
correspondent  to  what  is  realized  on  earth  ? Origen  showed 
how  both  the  GEconomical  and  the  Patripassian  theory 
could  be  transcended.  He  emphasized  the  idea  of  the 
Son : it  is  the  distinction  of  a son  to  be  born  of  the 
essence  of  the  Father ; their  relation  is  a process  of  gene- 

^ “ Adv,  Prax,,”  3. 

* Ibid.^  2,  3.  See  infra,  p.  99. 

* “Adv.  Hermog./’  3 ; “Adv.  Prax.,”  7,  9. 


84 


LOGICAL  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  IDEA. 


ration  ; and,  since  here  all  the  categories  are  infinite,  the 
process  must  be  eternal.^  In  this  conception  there  are 
these  elements  ; (a)  Father  and  Son  both  are  and  are 
real  ; (y8)  unity,  both  are  of  one  essence  ; (7)  relation,  the 
one  generating,  the  other  generated  ; and  (8)  eternity,  the 
process  ever  has  been  and  ever  must  be.  One  notion 
proper  to  absolute  Deity  was  absent — the  generation  was  by 
the  will  of  the  Father,  not  by  necessity  of  nature,  and  hence 
the  Son  was  ^609,  or  0 8euT6po9  ^eo9,  not  0 0e6<;  or  avroOeo'^.^ 
“ Exactly  so,”  said  Arius  ; “ then  once  He  was  not,  z.e.,  before 
the  Father  willed  Him  to  be ; since  made  by  will  He  is 
made  out  of  nothing  ; since  made  out  of  nothing  He  is  a 
creature,  dependent,  variable,  in  need  of  grace  to  keep  Him 
from  falling.”  “ Nay,”  replied  Athanasius,  “ if  He  is  a 
creature  made  by  will  out  of  nothing,  then  He  is  but  as  we 
are : in  coming  to  Him  we  do  not  get  to  God,  nor  does 
God  in  Him  get  to  us.  He  is  an  anomaly,  unequal  to 
creation,  unequal  to  redemption,  a mere  divisive  person, 
whose  place  in  the  universe  is  to  keep  apart  God  and  man. 
We  must  develop  and  define  our  idea  of  the  Godhead. 
Generation  is  not  a matter  of  will,  but  of  nature,  therefore 
of  necessity.  The  Father  did  not  choose  to  have  a Son ; 
Fatherhood  and  Sonship  are  of  the  very  essence  of  God  ; 
without  these  there  were  no  God.  As  they  are  of  the  Divine 
essence  and  that  essence  is  one,  God  is  one,  and  the  ‘ persons  ’ 
are  consubstantial.  This  unity  gives  us  a single  but  not 
a simple  God  ; He  is  complex,  manifold,  ever  has  been,  ever 
must  be,  a society,  a Godhead ; within  His  unity  Paternity 
and  Sonship  are  immanent,  and  as  such  necessities  of  His 
being.”  ^ 

^ “ De  Prin./’  iv.  28  ; Proem,  4. 

^ “ In  Evang.  Job.,”  tom.  ii.,  §§  2,  3,  vol.  L,  pp.  92,  93  (Lomm.);  “Cont. 
Cels./’  V.  39. 

3 See  the  two  forms  of  Arius’  Confession  of  Faith  in  Hahn,  “ Bibliothek 
der  Symb.  u.  Glaubensreg.  der  alten  Kirche,”  pp.  188-190. 


THE  TERMS  HAVE  A HISTORY. 


S5 


§ IV.— The  Terminology. 

As  with  the  thought  so  with  its  form  ; its  terminology 
was  slowly  elaborated,  each  distinctive  term  being  tried 
disputed,  rejected,  recalled,  and  finally  adopted  and  adapted’ 
in  a special  sense  to  a special  purpose.  The  conflict  of 
terms  is  but  a conflict  of  ideas,  the  struggle  towards  adjust- 
ment of  old  and  new,  and  by  their  use  or  disuse  causes 
can  be  discovered,  change  marked,  and  growth  measured 
Thus  X0709  has  a history  in  Greek  philosophy  before  it 
has  a being  in  Christian  theology.  Heraclitus  and  the 
Stoics  know  it  as  well  as  the  Apocrypha  and  Philo,  and  we 
must  understand  its  history  outside  the  theology  before 
we  can  understand  its  usage  within  it.  Justin  Martyr 
differs  as  much  from  John  as  from  Athanasius  ; his  idea  is 
inchoate,  partly  philosophical,  partly  theological  ; his  ^0709 
is  a 0eo9  erepo^,^  created  yet  divine,^  appointed  Creator  by 
the  will  of  God,^  existing  wholly  in  Christ,  partially  or  semi- 
nally  in  man;^  He  is  innate  in  all,  and  in  Him  all  partici- 
pate.® Theophilus  contrasts  the  X6709  eVSta^eT09  and  the  Xoyo^; 
'irpocpophKo^;  almost  exactly  in  the  Stoical  manner ; creation, 
providence,  and  prophecy  are  but  the  externalization  of  the 
internal  Word  ® In  certain  writers  the  idea  of  the  H0709  pushes 
into  the  background  the  idea  of  the  Tlo^  ; in  others  the  Ti6<s 
eclipses  the  H6709,  and  according  as  the  emphasis  falls  on  the 
one  or  on  the  other,  we  have  a different  set  of  terms  or  ideas 

^ “Dial.,”  c.  56,  vol,  ii.,  p.  184  (Otto):  cf,  “ApoL,”  i.  63.  Engelhardt, 
“Justin,”  p.  277,  contrasts  the  attitude  of  the  Dialogue  and  the  Apologies 
to  this  question.  Justin,  addressing  the  heathen,  shows  that  a man  may  be 
the  Son  of  God  and  an  object  of  worship;  but,  addressing  the  Jew,  that 
there  is  “ another  God  ” beside  the  one  God. 

^ “ Dial.,”  61,  62,  pp.  204-206,  210. 

3 “ Apol.,”  ii.  6;  i.  32,  22. 

^ Ibid.^  ii.  8,  10;  i.  44. 

® Ibid.,  i.  46 ; ii.  8,  13. 

® “ Ad  Autol.,”  ii.  10.  Cf.  Moller,  “ Kosmologie,”  pp.  133  ff. ; Drummond, 
“Philo  Judaeus,”  vol.  i.,  pp.  1 10  ff. 


86 


THE  TERMS  USED  IN  THEOLOGY 


defining  the  relation  to  the  Godhead.  Ovaia  is  a term 
common  to  various  philosophical  schools.^  To  the  Stoics 
the  universe  was  but  the  ovaia  of  God  ^ ; a thing  was  only 
so  far  as  it  participated  in  the  ovcrla,^  and  hence  in  relation 
to  phenomena  it  might  be  described  as  the  ingenerate, 
while  they  were  the  generated, though  God,  who,  speaking 
strictly,  was  the  alone  djevvyro^;,  could  retract  it  into  Him- 
self and  produce  it  from  Himself  again.®  With  Plutarch 
it  is  the  synonym  of  being,  simple,  abstract,  impassible, 
imperishable,  from  which  all  that  happens  or  appears  pro- 
ceeds and  becomes.®  He  distinguishes  indeed  a acofiaTiKy 
from  a voyry  ovaia,  the  one  being  vKy  or  viroKelfievov,  the 
other  fJLop<^y  or  elSo?,  and  out  of  the  union  of  these  the  world 
arises.^  But  the  relation  of  God  the  creator  is  not  one 
and  the  same  to  matter  and  to  soul  ; He  is  in  the  one  case 
maker,  artificer  (vrotTyr^?),  in  the  other  case  generator,  parent 
(iraTyp).  As  regards  matter,  his  mode  of  action  is  a iroLyao^, 
but  as  regards  souls  a yevvyat^i,  and  so  they  are  not  so 
much  His  work  as  a part  of  Him,  have  arisen  not  so  much 
through  Him  as  from  Him  and  out  of  Him.® 

From  philosophy  the  term  passed  into  Gnostic  theology,® 
and  thence  into  the  terminology  of  all  the  Greek  schools, 
heretical  and  orthodox.^®  With  its  application  to  the 

1 Cf.  Hatch’s  “ Hibbert  Lectures,”  pp.  269-279 ; Bigg’s,  “ Christian 
Platonists  of  Alexandria,”  pp.  163-165,  text  and  notes.  Dr.  Bigg  says: 
“ Ovaia  is  properly  Platonic,  while  vjroaTaais  is  properly  Stoic.”  But  this 
is  hardly  correct.  Ovaia,  especially  in  its  specific  Alexandrian  sense,  is 
more  Stoic  than  Platonic. 

2 Diog.  Laer.,  vii.  148. 

® Stob.,  “ Eel.,”  ii.  90. 

^ Diog.  Laer.,  vii.  134. 

^ Ibid.,  137  • *6)s  (sc.  ©eos)  hr\  defidapros  iari  Ka\  dyevvrjTos,  drjpiovpyos 
u>v  Tr]S  diaKoaprjafcos,  Kara  )(pov(Ov  Troias  Trepiodovs  duaXiaKcop  els  eavTOP  TijP 
UTraaav  ovaiav  Ka\  iraXiv  eavTov  yeppcov. 

fi  “ De  Is.,”  45,  53. 

^ “De  An.  Procr.,”  iii.  3,  4.  Cf.  ibid.,  ix.  i,  xxvii.  i ; “ De  Is.,”  53,  54. 

® “ Qusest.  Plat.,”  II.  i.  4ff. ; ii.  i,  2.  Cf.  “De  An.  Procr.,”  ix.  6. 

® Irenaeus,  I.  v.  i ; Ptolemaeus,  ap.  Epiphan.,  xxxiii.  7. 

’®“Clein.  Horn.,”  xx.  3;  xix.  12,  13.  Melito,  in  Routh,  1.  121,  where 


ARE  STILL  PHILOSOPHICAL. 


87 


Christian  Deity  it  took  on  a specific  sense  ; He  could  not 
be  changed  into  the  world,  nor  could  it  or  anything  within 
it  be  regarded  as  a modification  or  individualization  of 

Plim.  His  ov(TLa  was  distinct  from  all  created  being  and 

incommunicable  to  the  creature.  To  affirm  that  any  one 
possessed  the  Divine  ovaia  was  to  affirm  of  Him  necessary 
existence — i.e.y  Deity.  And  as  the  Deity  was  one,  the 
essence  was  indivisible  ^ ; but  as  philosophy  had  construed 
the  term,  a single  essence  did  not  exclude  the  idea  of 
personal  differences  and  distinctions.  To  denote  these  the 
terms  iTpoo-wira  and  later  vTToaTdaei^;  were  used.  'Ttto- 

crraai^  had  also  a history  in  philosophy,  was  introduced 
into  theology  by  the  Gnostics,^  was  employed  at  first  and 
throughout  the  Arian  controversy  as  the  synonym  of 

ovaia, ^ but  while  the  latter  remained  the  name  for  the 

more  abstract  being,  as  it  were  the  unqualified  or  un- 

differentiated Deity,  the  former  came  to  denote  the  more 
concrete,  or  Deity  realized  in  personal  modes,  distinguished 
and  distributed  into  personal  forms.  It  was  in  order  to 

emphasize  their  real  and  abiding,  as  opposed  to  a pheno- 

menal and  modal,  character  that  viroaraao^  was  substituted 
for  'TTpOaCdlTOv} 

But  the  viroaTaaa^  had  not  only  to  be  distinguished  ; they 
had  to  be  related  as  well ; and  this  relation  was  expressed 
by  the  famous  term  6pLoovaLo<;.  It,  too,  came  from  philosophy 

ras  dvo  airov  ovcTLas  refers  to  the  two  natures  of  Christ.  From  this  point 
onward  the  term  grows  ever  more  common  and  specific. 

^ Athanasius,  “De  Synod.,”  51  ff. 

2 Irenaeus,  I.  i.  i ; v.  4 ; xv.  5.  But  Tatian  speaks  of  God,  6 deo-Trorrjs 
Ta)v  oXcov,  as  T]  vTToarTao-is  rov  nrivTos,  “Or.  ad  Gr.,”  v. 

^ So  the  Nicene  Symb.,  irepas  vnoa-Tda-eois  fj  ovaias.  Cf.  “Athan.  ad 
Afros,”  4. 

^ See  important  notes  in  Harnack,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  252,  257.  Ullmann,  “Gre- 
gorius von  Nazianz.,”  pp.  246-248.  It  was  in  the  hands  of  the  three  great 
Cappadocians  that  the  distinction  between  ovaia  and  viroaTaais  became 
finally  fixed.  See  Greg.  Naz.,  “Or.,”  XLII.  16,  p.  759.  But  vnoaraais  and 
TrpoatoTTov  continued  to  be  used  interchangeably,  though  with  a distinct 
preference  for  vivoaraais. 


88 


TERMINI  TECHNICI  OF  THEOLOGY 


through  Gnosticism  into  theology/  and  had  there  a troubled 
history.  For  using  it  Paul  of  Samosata  was  condemned,  and 
Arius  for  not  using  it.^  The  condemnation  may  or  may  not 
have  been  right,  but  what  it  is  cited  here  to  illustrate  is  this — 
the  gradual  elaboration  and  articulation  of  thought  within  the 
Church  by  the  progressive  use  of  terms  formed  without  it,  such 
terms  working  their  way  to  enforcement  by  criticism,  adop- 
tion, and  definition  exactly  as  in  the  schools.  The  terms, 
too,  that  denote  the  distinctive  properties  of  the  persons 
have  a similar  history.  'Ayevvrjro^  is  by  Philo  applied  to 
God  so  as  to  distinguish  Him  on  the  one  hand  from  man 
as  yevv'qroii  and  on  the  other  hand  from  the  H6709  who  stands 
between  partaking  of  the  nature  of  both.^  So  the  Gnostic 
Valentinus  describes  the  Father  as  ^6vo<;  ayevv'qro^;,  but  as  He 
did  not  choose  to  be  alone  He  generated  vovv  teal  aiXr]Qeiav} 
The  first  real  indication  of  the  later  usage  occurs  in  the 
Clementine  Homilies,  where  the  Father  and  Son  are  dis- 
tinguished as  respectively  unbegotten  and  begotten,  and 
affirmed  to  be  outside  comparison  ^ ; but  even  more  explicit 
is  a passage  where  Ptolemaeus  contrasts  the  begotten  God 
with  the  one  unbegotten  Father,®  Over  against  the  yubvo^ 

^ Irenaeus,  I.  v.  I,  5,  6.  In  those  three  instances  the  later  usage  is  exactly 
anticipated.  So,  too,  Hippol.,  “ Philos.,”  vii.  22,  78  ; “ Clem.  Horn.,”  xx.  7 ; 
Ptolemaeus  “ ad  Floram,”  ap.  Epiphan.,  xxxiii.  7.  Harnack,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  192, 
193,  note  7,  has  called  attention  to  the  striking  way  in  which  Ptolemaeus 
forecasts  the  ecclesiastical  terminology  of  the  future. 

2 Athanasius,  “De  Synod.,”  42-53  , Basil,  “Ep.,”  52  ; Sozo.,  iv.  15.  See 
discussions  in  Routh,  hi.  360-365;  Newman’s  note,  pp.  165-176  of  his 
translation  of  the  Anti-Arian  Treatises,  and  Harnack,  i.  641  ff. 

® “ Quis  Rer.  Div.  Her.,”  § 42,  p.  502. 

^ Hippol.,  “ Philos.,”  vi.  29. 

* xvi.  16. 

® “ Ad  Floram,”  ap.  Epiphan.,  xxxiii.  7.  The  contrast  to  the  precise 
Gnostic  use  is  the  undeveloped  and  incorrect  Ignatian,  Eph.  vii.  Cf. 
Lightfoot’s  “ Excursus,”  vol.  ii.,  pp.  90-94.  In  Justin,  “ Apol.,”  ii.  6,  where 
the  Father  is  qualified  as  dyewrjTos  and  the  Son  or  Logos  as  yevva> ^evos,  we 
see  the  action  of  the  same  philosophical  influences  as  had  shaped  the  Gnostic 
terminology.  This  is  only  the  more  emphasized  by  the  doctrine  as  to  the 
relativity  of  the  names  and  knowledge  of  God  which  the  passage  affirms. 


COME  THROUGH  GNOSTICISM. 


aj6uvr]To^  stands  the  ixovoyevi^^,  the  Father  can  be  Father  only 
as  He  has  a Son;  and  here,  too,  as  regards  theological  use,  the 
Gnostics,  in  direct  dependence  on  John,  anticipated  the  Fathers/ 

§ V. — The  Merits  and  the  Defects  of  the  Theology. 

But  it  is  needless  to  multiply  examples : the  facts  are 
patent  enough  ; all  that  we  need  to  do  is  to  see  their  signi- 
ficance. The  Fathers  could  not  help  themselves  ; the  terms 
were  there,  and  they  must  speak  in  the  language  of  their 
people  and  day  and  school.  But  to  use  the  language  was 
to  admit  the  thought  ; to  translate  their  beliefs  into  the 
formulae  of  the  schools  was  to  make  them  scholastic  formulae, 
translated  in  matter  as  well  as  in  form.  The  matter  con- 
strued was  not  the  old  scholastic  matter,  and  so  the  new 
definitions  and  theorems  were  not  identical  with  the  old  ; 
but  they  were  definitions  and  theorems  all  the  same,  exactly 
as  scholastic  in  character,  value,  and  function  as  those  they 
superseded.  What  entered  the  speculative  Greek  intellect 
a religion  and  a history  came  out  a theology,  as  much  a 
creation  of  the  metaphysical  mind  as  if  the  place  had  been 
an  academy  or  a school  instead  of  a council.  But  the  theo- 
logy was  as  little  the  ultimate  science  of  the  religion  or  of  the 
history  as  Plato  or  Aristotle  is  the  ultimate  science  of  nature 
and  man  and  society.  It  was  simply  a philosophy  of  the 
new  material  in  the  language  of  the  old  schools. 

It  is  no  part  of  our  purpose  to  discuss  here  the  truth  or 
value  of  this  theology,  only  to  indicate  how  it  came  to  be.  Yet 

^ See  a careful  analysis  of  the  evidence  as  to  this  dependence  on  John  in 
Hort,  “Two  Dissertations,”  pp.  30  ff.  The  history  of  the  terms  used  in 
Greek  theology  has  still  to  be  written,  and  only  when  it  has  been  will  the 
continuance  within  the  theology  of  old  philosophical  questions  be  made 
apparent.  All  the  contemporary  schools,  philosophical  as  well  as  theo- 
logical, were  grappling  with  the  same  questions,  hitting  upon  kindred 
solutions,  and  looking  for  li^ht  along  similar  lines.  The  text  attempts 
neither  a history  nor  an  explication  of  the  terms ; it  only  seeks  to  indicate 
that  they  belong  to  theology,  because  to  the  speculative  tendencies  and 
endeavours  of  the  time. 


90 


IN  NICENE  THEOLOGY  GOD  A UNITY, 


there  are  two  points  of  view  from  which  it  may  be  regarded  : 
the  philosophy  it  continued  or  the  material  it  construed. 
From  the  first  point  of  view  the  theology  of  Nicsea  and 
Chalcedon  is  a bold  and  splendid  piece  of  constructive  meta- 
physics, the  completion  of  the  ancient  Greek  quest  after  a 
scientific  conception  of  God  and  His  relation  to  man.  It 
combines  elements  that  had  before  been  held  to  be  incom- 
patible in  thought.  It  endeavours  to  translate  God  from 
an  abstract  into  a concrete,  related,  living  Absolute  ; to  con- 
ceive Him  as  a Godhead  which  has  within  itself  all  the 
constituents  and  conditions  of  a real  intellectual,  moral,  and 
social  existence,  as  if  He  were  a universe  while  God.  This 
is  the  meaning  of  its  heroic  struggle  to  affirm  at  once  the 
unity  of  the  Divine  Essence  and  the  distinction  of  the  Divine 
Persons.  The  unity  is  not  a simplicity,  but,  as  it  were,  a rich 
and  complex  manifold,  an  absolute  which  is  the  home  of  all 
relations,  a unity  which  is  the  bosom  of  all  difference,  the 
source  and  ground  of  all  variety.  Such  a conception  saves 
us  from  the  Deism  which  shuts  up  God  within  the  limita- 
tions or  impotences  of  His  own  infinitude,  and  from  the 
Pantheism  which  loses  Him  within  the  multitudinous  and 
fleeting  phenomena  of  an  ever-changing  universe.  But  the 
re-articulation  of  the  theistic  idea  was  only  one  side  of  the 
endeavour  ; the  other  side  was  the  adjustment  or  adapta- 
tion to  it  of  the  idea  of  man.  This  was  accomplished  in  a 
twofold  way : by  a general  doctrine  of  human  nature,  and 
by  a special  doctrine  as  to  the  person  of  Christ.  By  the  first 
the  Divine  and  human  natures  were  made  to  approximate, 
to  become  sympathetic,  capable  of  related  and  even  allied 
being ; by  the  other,  the  Divine  had  actually  so  realized  this 
relation  with  the  human  that  it  had  come  to  have  a sort 
of  corporate  being  in  the  race.  God’s  transcendence  had 
stooped  to  immanence,  and  by  the  incarnation  of  One  the 
Divine  life  of  the  whole  had  been  assured.  These  gracious 
and  sublime  ideas  were  the  aim  rather  than  the  achievement 


MORE  METAPHYSICAL  THAN  ETHICAL.  9 1 

of  the  theology ; they  were  more  what  it  aspired  to  than 
what  it  reached.  But  even  so  they  compel  us  to  regard  it 
as  the  completion,  under  the  impulse  of  the  Christian  history, 
of  the  quest  of  ancient  thought  after  a scientific  conception 
of  Deity. 

But  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  material  construed  the 
theory  was  much  more  defective.  It  did  most  inadequate 
justice  to  the  theistic  contents  of  the  Christian  history. 
Metaphysics  had  triumphed  over  ethics,  scholastic  terms 
over  moral  realities.  It  is  hard  to  say  whether  the  Nicene 
theology  did  more  eminent  service  or  disservice  to  the 
Christian  conception  of  God.  In  contending  for  the  Deity 
of  the  Son,  it  too  much  forgot  to  conceive  the  Deity  through 
the  Son  and  as  the  Son  conceived  Him.  In  its  hands,  and 
in  consequence  of  its  definitions  and  authority,  the  meta- 
physical Trinity  tended  to  supersede  the  ethical  Godhead. 
The  Church,  when  it  thought  of  the  Father,  thought  more 
of  the  First  Person  in  relation  to  the  Second  than  of  God 
in  relation  to  man  ; when  it  thought  of  the  Son,  it  thought 
more  of  the  Second  Person  in  relation  to  the  First  than  of 
humanity  in  relation  to  God.  The  immanent  relations  may 
be  the  essential  and  real,  but  they  are  not  interpreted  unless 
made  the  basis  of  the  outward  and  actual.  The  Fatherhood 
in  the  Godhead  loses  its  moral  and  religious  meaning  unless 
it  be  translated  into  the  Fatherhood  of  God ; the  Sonship 
within  the  Trinity  is  without  its  most  majestic  and  gracious 
sense  till  it  finds  its  consequent  and  correlate  in  the  sonship 
of  man.  The  Nicene  theology  failed  here  because  it  inter- 
preted God  and  articulated  its  doctrine  in  the  terms  of  the 
schools  rather  than  in  the  terms  of  the  consciousness  of 
Christ.  It  would  have  better  served  the  Church  and  the 
truth  if  it  had  done  the  first  not  less,  but  the  second  much 
more.  For  its  too  metaphysical  Godhead  injuriously  affected 
in  all  its  branches  all  later  theology.  The  persons  of  the 
Godhead,  from  being  metaphysically,  came,  especially  in  the 


92  METAPHYSICAL  UNITIES,  ETHICAL  DIVISIONS. 

hands  of  Western  theology,  to  be  ethically  distinguished  ; and 
on  this  distinction  theories  of  salvation  were  based  which 
represented  it  as  transacted  within  God,  though  applied  and 
carried  out  in  time  according  to  the  terms  of  the  eternal 
covenant.  The  division  of  the  Persons  within  the  Godhead 
had  as  its  necessary  result  the  division  of  God  from  man,  and 
the  exaltation  of  miraculous  and  unethical  agencies  as  the 
means  of  bridging  over  the  gulf.  The  inadequacy  in  these 
cardinal  respects  of  the  Nicene  theology  would  be  inexplicable 
were  we  to  regard  it  as  a creation  of  supernatural  wisdom  or 
the  result  of  special  Divine  enlightenment ; but  it  is  altogether 
normal  when  conceived  as  a stage  in  the  development  of 
Christian  thought.  In  it  Greek  philosophy  was  translated 
into  Christian  theology,  and,  of  course,  its  translation  did  not 
mean  its  death. 


CHAPTER  V. 


THE  LATIN  THEOLOGY  AND  CHURCH 
§ I. — Their  Distinctive  Factors. 

HE  action  of  the  Latin  mind  on  Christianity  was  quite 


X as  characteristic  as  the  action  of  the  Greek.  They 
differed  indeed  as  tendencies  rather  than  as  antitheses — i.e., 
they  were  not  conscious  contradictions  or  even  opposites, 
but  distinct  habits  and  tempers  unconsciously  working  out 
dissimilar  results.  This  did  not  exclude  mutual  influence. 
Tertullian  created  as  to  the  Godhead  modes  of  thought  and 
representation  that  affected  the  Eastern  mind  ; Dionysius  of 
Rome  admonished  and  corrected  Dionysius  of  Alexandria. 
If  Athanasius  was  the  theologian  of  the  Nicene  Council, 
Hosius  was  its  diplomatist,  and  Leo  was  even  more  potent 
at  Chalcedon.  On  the  other  side,  the  Greek  apologists 
powerfully  influenced  Tertullian,  much  as  his  principles  and 
methods  differed  from  theirs,  while  neo-Platonic  thought 
modified  the  minds  of  Victorinus  the  Rhetor,  Hilary,  Am- 
brose, and,  above  all,  Augustine.  But  this  mutual  influence 
does  not  exclude  independent  development ; nay,  it  helps 
us  all  the  more  to  measure  and  to  value  the  action  of  the 
different  minds  and  conditions  in  the  creation  of  ecclesiastical 
thought  and  institutions. 

Two  quite  distinct  questions  are  here  before  us  : the  one 
touching  the  relation  of  Roman  polity,  taken  in  its  widest 
possible  sense,  to  the  organization  of  the  Church  ; the  other 


93 


94 


ORGANIZATION  AND  THOUGHT. 


touching  the  action  of  the  thought  which  at  once  accom- 
panied, conditioned,  and  sanctioned  the  movement.  It  was 
here  as  in  the  Roman  Empire  ; as  was  the  jurist  to  the  one, 
such  was  the  theologian  to  the  other.  While  soldiers  and 
statesmen  gave  to  the  Empire  visible  form,  the  jurists  found 
for  it  a philosophy,  which  not  only  idealized  the  reality,  but 
helped  to  secure  its  stability  and  the  greater  happiness  of  its 
citizens  and  subjects.  While  the  Church  was  in  the  process 
of  formation  the  Empire  was  undergoing  a sort  of  apotheosis, 
becoming  in  a sense  a church  rather  than  a state.  The 
worship  of  the  Emperor  was  only  a symbol  of  the  common 
reverence  for  the  Empire,  a confession  that  the  system  under 
which  they  lived  was  Divine,  a religion  even  more  than  a 
government.  Two  parallel  movements  went  on,  a political 
and  an  intellectual ; the  one  a development  of  the  State  as 
an  organism,  the  other  of  the  ideas  by  which  it  was  pene- 
trated, illumined,  justified  ; and  the  result  was  a double 
transformation,  a civil  and  a religious.  The  more  highly 
organized  the  State  became  the  more  distinctly  it  grew  into 
a religion  ; the  change  in  civil  organization  from  what  it  was 
under  the  later  Republic  to  what  it  had  become  under  the 
Empire  at  the  end  of  the  second  century  but  feebly  reflected 
the  far  greater  change  in  religious  thought. 

As  in  the  Empire,  so  in  the  Church ; organization  and 
thought  went  hand  in  hand,  each  conditioning  the  other  and 
both  affected  by  the  world  in  which  they  lived.  As  to  the 
organization,  little  can  here  be  said  ; happily,  it  has  of  late 
been  amply,  though  far  from  finally,  discussed  from  various 
points  of  view.^  What  stands  out  clear  from  these  discus- 
sions is  this  : the  organization  of  the  Church  has  a history, 
and  is  therefore  capable  of  scientific  explanation.  It  can  be 

^ The  literature  concerned  with  this  question  is  far  too  extensive  to  be 
here  noticed.  Happily,  it  is  beginning  to  be  discussed  with  something  of 
the  scientific  spirit.  Among  the  works  meant  in  the  text  are  Ritschl’s 
“Altkathol.  Kirche”;  Lightfoot’s  dissertation  on  “the  Christian  Ministry  ” ; 
Hatch’s  “ Bampton  Lectures  ” ; Harnack’s  translation  of  Hatch,  with  his 


IMPERIAL  CHURCH  LEGALIZED  THEOLOGY. 


95 


seen  growing,  its  growth  measured,  and  the  causes  discovered 
and  determined.  It  does  not  issue  from  the  mind  of  the 
Master  as  it  now  exists  in  the  Greek,  the  Roman,  the 
Anglican,  or  any  one  of  the  Reformed  Churches  ; and  what 
can  be  explained  by  local  causes  and  conditions  is  only 
made  inexplicable  when  traced  to  miraculous  power.  Of 
these  causes  the  most  potent  was  the  polity,  public  and 
private,  of  the  societies,  the  cities,  and  the  empire  into 
which  it  entered.  By  a process  gradual  but  inevitable  it 
came  to  be  construed  in  the  language  of  the  State,  and  so 
organized  by  the  empire  that  it  superseded  as  to  be  its  only 
qualified  and  possible  successor.  But  what  concerns  us  here 
is  the  thought  which,  developing  with  the  organization, 
became,  as  it  were,  its  immanent  reason,  the  philosophy  that 
gave  it  meaning,  the  spirit  that  was  its  power. 

§ IL— Tertullian.  . • 

The  point  at  which  our  discussion  can  best  begin  is  with 
the  man  who,  because  he  was  the  first,  distinctly  and  lumi- 
nously, to  embody  the  Western  spirit,  did  so  much  to  shape 
its  later  course  : Tertullian.  He  is  a man  of  marked  indivi- 
duality ; indeed,  with  him,  as  with  Paul  and  Augustine, 
personal  character  is  the  most  determinative  element  in  his 
history  and  thought.  But  the  formal  factors  of  his  mind 
may  be  described  as  two : Stoic  philosophy  and  Roman 
jurisprudence.  We  cannot  agree  with  Ritter  when  he  says  ^ 
that  in  Tertullian  a more  philosophical  spirit  lived  than  had 
as  yet  appeared  in  Latin  literature  ; but  it  is  certain  that, 
in  spite  of  his  hot  and  scornful  invective  against  philosophy, 
he  was  one  of  the  very  first  to  philosophize  in  a Christian 

own  “Analecten”;  his  discussions  in  the  “ Dogmengeschichte,”  in  the 
“ Didache,’’  and  in  various  parts  of  the  “Texte  u.  Untersuchn.” ; Gore’s 
“The  Church  and  the  Ministry”;  Loening’s  “ Gemeindeverfassung  des 
Urchristentums,”  with  Loots’  review  in  the  Studien  u.  Kr.  for  1890. 

“ Gesch.  der  Christlich.  Philos.,”  vol.  i.,  p.  417. 


96 


TERTULLIAN  STOIC  AND  JURIST. 


sense.^  This  he  did  on  the  basis  of  Stoicism,  though,  to 
use  Neander’s  phrase,  in  harmony  with  the  “massive  one- 
sidedness of  his  nature.”^  He  may  not  always  mean  so  to 
use  it,  but  he  so  uses  it  all  the  same.  Thus  he  employs  the 
term  “ natura  ” in  the  Stoical  sense,^  which  was  also  the  sense 
most  familiar  to  the  Roman  jurists.  It  denotes  the  trans- 
cendental ideal  or  law  or  reason  embodied  in  the  constitu- 
tion alike  of  man  and  the  universe.  But,  of  course,  with 
Tertullian  “natura”  never  becomes  the  synonym  of  God  or 
supersedes  Him  ; on  the  contrary,  it  simply  expresses  His 
mind  and  will.  And  so  to  act  against  nature  is  to  disobey 
God  ; the  contra-natural  is  the  ungodly,  is  sin.  God  is  the 
teacher  of  the  reason^;  it  testifies  before  Scripture  and  inde- 
pendently of  Scripture  to  His  being,®  to  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,®  nay,  even  to  the  truth  of  Christianity.’'  As  with 
“ natura,”  so  with  “ substantia.”  This  term  most  frequently 
translates  the  Stoical  vTroKelfjuevov  ; it  is  the  substratum  of 
things,  the  essence  or  basis  of  all  reality®  ; as  such  it  is  the 
corporeal,  is  body,  for  what  is  without  body  is  without  being.^ 
Spirit  is  a kind  of  body,  and  save  as  body  soul  is  not.^®  And 

^ “ Gesch.  der  Christlich.  Philos.,”  vol.  i.,  p.  379. 

* “ Antignosticus,”  p.  4. 

® “ De  Corona,”  5,  6 : “ Natura  quae  prima  omnium  disciplina  est.”  “ Quae- 
rens  igitur  Dei  legem  habes  commuiiem  istam  in  publico  mundi,  in  natura- 
libus  tabulis.”  “ Ipsum  Deum  secundum  Naturam  prius  novimus.”  “ De 
Paenit,”  I : “ Quippe  res  Dei  ratio;  quia  Deus  omnium  conditor,  nihil  non 
ratione  providit,  disposuit,  ordinavit,  nihil  non  ratione  tractari  intellegique 
voluit.”  Cf.  “De  Spect,”  2,  18,  23,  27. 

* “ De  Test.  An.,”  5 : “ Magistra  Natura,  anima  discipula.  Quicquid  aut 
ilia  edocuit  aut  ista  perdidicit,  a Deo  traditum  est,  magistro  scilicet  ipsius 
magistrae.” 

® “ Adv.  Marc.,”  i.  10:  “Nee  hoc  ullis  Moysi  libris  debent.  Ante  anima 
quam  prophetia.  Animae  enim  a primordio  conscientia  Dei  dos  est.”  Cf. 
cc.  13-18. 

* “ De  Test.  An.,’’  2-4. 

^ “ ApoL,”  17  ; “ O testimonium  animae  naturaliter  Christianae.” 

® “ Adv.  Herm.,”  34-36;  “ Adv.  Prax.,”  7,  9 ; “ Adv.  Marc.,”  hi.  10. 

® “ De  Came  Chr.,”  Il  : “ Omne  quod  est,  corpus  est  Sui  generis.  Nihil 
est  incorporale  nisi  quod  non  est.”  Cf.  “Adv,  Herm.,”  35. 

“De  An.,”  7 : “Nihil  enim,  si  non  corpus.”  He  finds  in  the  parable 


CORPOREALITY  OF  GOD  AND  SPIRIT. 


97 


these  categories  apply  to  God  as  to  the  soul  ; He  is  body 
because  He  is  substance^;  though  “substantia,”  He  is 
“ spiritus,”  while  the  soul  is  “ afflatus,”  which  is  an  inferior 
kind  of  substance.^  Since  the  soul  is  corporeal,  it  is  passible  ; 
because  it  feels,  perceiving  ; because  it  perceives,  suffering.^ 
As  our  knowledge  is  sensuous,  we  can  know  God  only  in 
part  ; the  body  which  fills  all  space  can  never  be  fully  per- 
ceived by  a body  localized,  however  well  equipped  with 
senses.^  As  He  is  body.  He  has  hands,  feet,  and  eyes  ® ; 
and  as  He  is  substance,  He  is  capable,  as  it  were,  of  distribu- 
tion without  division  into  various  forms  or  portions  ® ; and 
it  is  because  of  such  distribution  or,  let  us  say,  specialization 
of  the  Divine  substance,  that  the  Logos  or  Son  arises,  who 
must  possess  this  substance  in  order  to  be  Divine,  and  He 
must  be  corporeal  or  He  could  not  be.  Since,  then,  substance 
is  necessarily  corporeal,  body  becomes  of  the  very  essence  of 
humanity  ; only  in  its  terms  can  the  Incarnation  be  stated 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  race  be  conceived  and  described 
on  the  other.  This  explains  the  emphasis  he  lays  on  the 
flesh,  alike  as  regards  Christ  ^ and  man.  It  supplies,  too,  the 
basis  for  the  legalism  and  the  correlative  materialism  (for 
the  one  is  but  the  political,  the  other  the  metaphysical  side 
of  the  same  thing)  which  underlie  all  forms  of  sacerdotalism, 

of  Dives  and  Lazarus  the  clearest  evidence  of  the  “ corporalitas  animae.” 
Cf.  9-1 1.  Augustine  animadverts  on  this  dictum,  “ De  Genesi  ad  Lit.,’^ 
lib.  X.,  ad  fin. 

^ “ Adv.  Prax.,”  7 : “ Quis  enim  negabit  deum  corpus  esse,  etsi  Deus 
spiritiis  est?  Spiritus  enim  corpus  sui  generis  in  sua  effigie.”  Cf.  the 
Stoical  o-a>/xa  eVriv  6 Geos',  Clem.  Ah,  “ Strom.,”  i,  II,  § 

* “Adv.  Marc.,”  ii.  9.  Cf.  “De  Paenit.,”  3. 

3 “ De  An.,”  7. 

^ “Adv.  Marc.,”  ii.  16  ; “Adv.  Prax.,”  14. 

® “ Adv.  Marc.,”  ii.  16.  But,  he  argues,  these  members  are  not  to  be  compared 
with  man’s. 

® “ Adv.  Prax.,”  8,  9,  14. 

^ In  resisting  Docetism  Tertullian  fell  over  into  the  opposite  and  equally 
serious  error  of  what  can  only  be  described  as  Materialism.  His  concep- 
tion alike  of  the  Person  and  the  Passion  is  much  too  sensuous  to  be  true 
either  to  the  divinity  or  the  humanity.  Cf.  “ Apoh,”  21;  “Adv.  Marc.,” 
iii.  8 ; but  especially  the  treatise  “ De  Came  Chr.” 


98 


THE  JURIST  CONSTRUES  THE  GODHEAD 


especially  in  its  cardinal  doctrines  of  ordination  and  sacra- 
ments, and  determines  all  the  doctrines  touching  man  and 
his  native  depravity  co-ordinated  under  the  generic  name 
of  original  sin.  With  Tertullian  these  doctrines  take  their 
rise,  inchoate  in  form,  but  consistent  and  complete  in  principle. 
The  “ propagatio  animarum  per  traducem  ” is  with  him  the 
logical  consequence  of  his  doctrine  of  being.  If  souls  are 
bodies,  they  must  be  capable  of  propagation.  Adam  becomes 
the  common  root  or  womb  of  mankind  ; from  him  all  have 
proceeded,  in  him  all  were  contained.^  But  if  this  is  so, 
then  Adam  is  the  unevolved  race,  the  race  is  the  evolved 
Adam — he  with  all  its  sins  and  all  its  souls  latent  within 
him,  it  with  his  sin  evolved  in  the  evolution  of  all  the  souls 
that  make  up  its  collective  and  continued  being.^ 

But  quite  as  determinative  as  his  Stoicism  is  his  Roman 
jurisprudence.  As  a theologian  he  remains  a jurist,  his 
theology,  in  spite  of  his  Montanism,  being  stamped  with  the 
image  of  the  forensic  mind.  Thus  it  is  as  a jurist  rather 
than  as  a Stoic  that  he  construes  the  Godhead.^  It  is  to  him 
“ una  substantia,  tres  personae.”  By  the  former  term  God  is 
distinguished  from  man.  Tertullian  was  too  good  a theist  to 
take  “ substantia  ” like  the  Stoic  in  a pantheistic  or  monistic 
sense,  and  so  he  writes  “ Deus  substantiae  ipsius  nomen.”  ^ 
He  was  not  the  sole  substance  ; for  “substantia”  was  rather 
the  name  of  an  individual  existence,  “ substantia  propria  est 
rei  cuiusque,”  and  so  denoted  difference,  while  “ natura  ” de- 
noted what  was  common.®  It  was  by  virtue  of  their  respective 
substances  that  God  and  the  world  differed,  and  this  difference 
was  developed  in  what  we  can  only  describe  as  the  terms  of 

^ “ De  An.,”  9,  20,  21,  25-27  ; “ De  Res.  Car.,”  45  ; “ De  Came  Chr.,”  11. 

^ “ De  Test.  An.,”  3 : “ Per  quern  (Satan)  homo  a primordio  circumventus, 
ut  praeceptum  Dei  excederet,  et  propterea  in  mortem  datus  exinde  totum 
genus  de  suo  semine  infectum  suae  etiam  damnationis  traducem  fecit.” 
Cf.  “De  An.,”  41. 

® “ Adv.  Prax.,”  2,  3. 

* “ Adv.  Herm.,”  3. 

* “ De  An.,”  32. 


IN  TERMS  FORENSIC  AND  POLITICAL. 


99 


jurisprudence.  Deus  was  always  “substantia,”  but  not  always 
“dominus.”  He  became  Dominus  because  of  creation,  and 
Judex  because  of  sin.^  But  while  He  exercises  rule  over 
the  creature,  He  has  communicated  of  His  substance  to  the 
Son  and  the  Spirit,  who  constitute  together  with  the  Father 
the  “ tres  personae.”  “ Persona  ” is  a legal  term,  denoting  the 
party  or  name  to  a suit,  and  “ substantia  ” floats  between 
its  legal  and  philosophical  sense.  The  “ personae  ” differ 
“ gradu,”  “ forma,”  “ specie,”  which  were  all  juridical  terms, 
often  used  as  synonyms ; and  they  agree  “ statu,”  “ sub- 
stantia,” “ potestate,”  ^ terms  also  juridical  and  synonymous. 
The  “ personae  ” were  thus  distinguished,  but  the  “ substantia  ” 
was  not  divided,  a state  of  things  most  intelligible  to  one 
who  thought  as  a Roman  lawyer ; and  this  distinction  he 
conceives  as  a matter  of  disposition,  dispensation,  or  oiKouofiia. 
Under  suggestion  from  this  term  he  passes  from  legal  to 
political  nomenclature,  and  speaks  of  the  “ personae  ” as 
“officiales,”  the  agents  of  an  administration.  The  Godhead 
is  a monarchy,  and  monarchy  signifies  nothing  else  than 
“ singulare  et  unicum  imperium,”  but  the  authority  does  not 
cease  to  be  one  by  having  more  than  one  minister.  And  so, 
speaking  like  a Roman  jurist,  he  describes  the  Son  and  the 
Spirit  as  “ consortes  substantiae  Patris,”  ^ with  whom  He 
speaks  “ quasi  cum  ministris  et  arbitris  ex  unitate  Trinitatis.” 
To  be  this  were  they  created,  for  Son  and  Spirit  alike  owe 
their  being  to  the  Father.^  In  harmony  with  this  idea  of 
the  Godhead  is  his  notion  of  man’s  relation  to  God.  He  is 
under  law,  and  law  positive — to  be  obeyed,  not  because  it  is 
right,  but  simply  because  it  is  law  instituted  by  the  Supreme 
Legislator.^  Hence  man  becomes  by  sin  a criminal  ; his  sins 

1 “Adv.  Herm.,”  3. 

* “Adv.  Prax.,”2.  SeeDirksen,  “Manuale  Lat.Fon.  Jur.Civ.  Rom.,”  vv. 

* “Adv.  Prax.,”  3,  4,  12. 

^ Supra,  p.  83. 

^ “ De  Paenit.,”  4:  “Neque  enim  quia  bonum  est,  idcirco  auscultare 
debemus,  sed  quia  Deus  praecepit!”  Cf.  Scorp.,  2,  3. 


100 


THE  FORENSIC  SOTERIOLOGY. 


are  “ crimina,”  “ delicta  interdicta,”  punished  as  such  things 
must  bed  The  legal  idea  Paul  struggled  so  hard  to  expel  thus 
returns  in  a more  aggravated  form,  not  as  a Divine  institution 
to  purify,  but  as  an  instrument  of  judgment  and  justice,  which 
those  it  condemned  could  yet  propitiate.  With  it  enters  the 
notion,  so  offensive  to  Paul,  of  merit,  and  with  merit  the  idea 
of  the  means  of  creating  it,  and  of  its  worth  or  function  with 
God.  Hence  comes  the  belief  in  a God  who  needs  to  be 
satisfied,  and  in  penance  as  a method  of  satisfaction.^  In 
a moment,  as  twins  born  of  the  same  idea,  forensic  theology 
and  legal  morality  came  to  be.  Both  have  a common  basis, 
a God  so  much  a personalized  law  that  He  needs  by  suffering 
to  be  satisfied  for  the  dishonour  done  by  sin.  If  the  sin  be 
conceived  to  be  so  great  that  only  a God  can  satisfy  God,  we 
have  the  scholastic  theory  of  the  Atonement.  If  the  offence 
be  such  that  satisfaction  can  be  given  by  the  act  or  suffering 
of  men,  we  have  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  merit  and  inter- 
cession. On  such  a basis  and  with  such  ideas,  we  only  need 
to  have  a positive  institution  to  have  a system  of  jurisprudence 
translated  into  a Church. 

§ III. — The  Old  Religions  and  the  New. 

But  now,  in  order  to  include  other  elements  necessaiy  to 
this  discussion,  we  must  turn  to  the  action  of  the  third 
factor — the  religion.^  As  the  field  here  is  so  immense,  we 
must  confine  ourselves  to  a single  point — the  ministry ; 
but,  happily,  it  involves  almost  all  that  is  essential.  Here 
our  question  is  not  political,  concerned  with  sources, 

^ “ De  Psenit.,”  3. 

2 Ibid.,  5,  9.  The  doctrine  of  merit,  or  the  satisfaction  of  God  by- 
penances  or  works,  as  it  appears  in  Tertullian,  deserves  a fuller  discussion 
than  we  can  give  to  it  here.  It  was  simply  an  adaptation  of  the  principle 
of  Roman  law:  “ Qui  enim  accepit  satisfactionem,  injuriam  suam  remisit” 
(“Digest,”  lib.  xlvii.  lo,  17,  § 6:  cf.  iv.  2,  14,  §§  9,  li).  But  this  adapta- 
tion represents  the  substitution  of  the  legal  for  the  evangelical  idea.  See 
Harnack,  “ Dogmengesch.,”  iii.  16-18,  note  i. 

* Supra,  p.  61. 


RELIGIONS  PRIESTLY  AND  PRIESTLESS. 


lOI 


succession,  or  degrees  in  office,  but  material,  concerned  with 
what  the  ministry  was  and  what  it  became.^ 

We  begin  with  the  position  already  stated — the  Church  at  its 
origin  had  no  official  priesthood.^  Regarded  through  the  rela- 
tion of  its  constituent  members,  it  was  a family,  a brotherhood, 
a household  of  faith  ^ ; from  the  standpoint  of  its  privileges 
and  liberties  it  was  an  ifCKXrjaia,  or  society  of  the  enfranchised, 
where  every  man  was  free  and  a citizen  ^ ; from  its  relation  to 
God  it  could  be  variously  described  as  a “kingdom,”  an  “elect 
people,”  a “ royal  priesthood,”  or  a “ temple  built  of  living 
stones.”  ^ As  the  priesthood  was  the  collective  spiritual  so- 
ciety, so  all  its  sacrifices  were  spiritual  or  ethical,  never  sensuous. 
Men  were  to  present  their  bodies  a “ living  sacrifice,”  which 
was  a “ reasonable  service,”  “ holy,  acceptable  unto  God.”  ® 
Beneficence  and  charity  are  “ sacrifices  ” with  which  “ God  is 
well  pleased.”  ^ “ Praise  ” is  a “ sacrifice  ” ® ; the  gifts  of  love 

are  “ an  odour  of  sweet  smell,  a sacrifice  acceptable,  well  pleas- 
ing to  God.”  ^ The  special  function  of  the  “ holy  priesthood,” 
formed  as  it  is  of  the  “living  stones”  which  God  has  built  into 

^ The  political  and  the  sacerdotal  questions  are  quite  distinct.  Both  are 
historical,  but  the  question  as  to  episcopacy  and  episcopal  succession  is 
altogether  political — z.e.,  a question  of  polity  or  constitution;  while  the 
question  as  to  the  priesthood  touches  the  very  nature  and  character  of  the 
religion.  Men  may  hold  the  episcopal  theory  and  deny  the  sacerdotal ; 
and  they  may  hold  the  sacerdotal  without  accepting  the  episcopal.  Of 
works  that  deal  with  the  specific  question  there  may  be  named : Ritschl’s 
“Altkathol.  Kirche,”pp.  362,  368,  394,  461,  555,  560,  576;  Rothe,  “Vorles. 
ub.  Kirchengesch.,”  pp,  208-231,  299-313;  Harnack,  “ Dogmengesch.,” 
i.  283  ff. ; Hofling,  “ Die  Lehre  der  altes.  Kirche  vom  Opfer,”  and  an 
essay  of  my  own  in  Jubilee  Lectures  (1882),  on  “Ecclesiastical  Polity  and 
the  Religion  of  Christ.” 

^ Supra,  pp.  48,  49. 

3 Eph.  iii.  15;  I Peter  ii.  17;  i Thess.  iv.  9;  Gal.  vi.  10;  Eph.  ii.  19. 

I Cor.  i.  2 ; 2 Cor.  viii.  19,  et passim. 

® John  xviii.  36,  37  ; i Peter  ii.  9;  Titus  ii.  14;  Heb.  viii.  10;  I Peter  ii.  5 ; 
I Cor.  iii.  16-19;  2 Cor.  vi.  16;  Eph.  iii.  21. 

® Rom.  xii.  i. 

^ Heb.  xiii.  ii. 

® Heb.  xiii,  15. 

» Phil.  iv.  iS. 


102 


THE  HIGHER  POLITICAL  PRECEDES 


a “ spiritual  house,”  is  to  “ offer  up  spiritual  sacrifices  accept- 
able to  God  through  Jesus  Christ.”^  This  view  is  common 
to  all  the  writers  of  all  tendencies  in  the  New  Testament. 
James  defines  “pure  religion  before  God  and  the  Father” 
to  be  this  : “ to  visit  the  widow  and  the  fatherless  in  their 
affliction,  and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the  world.”  ^ 
And  the  definition  is  made  the  more  impressive  by  his 
using  a term  (OprjaKeia)  which  denotes  the  body  or  outer 
form  of  religion,  not  its  inner  essence  or  spirit. 

And  these  ideas  did  not  at  once  die,  though  the  process 
of  deterioration  or  materialization  began  very  soon.  They 
live  throughout  the  second  century,  but  in  the  face  of 
tendencies  at  once  creative  and  prophetic  of  change.  We 
see  them  first  successful  in  heresy,  which  here,  as  in  so 
many  things — tradition.  Apostolic  succession,  sacramental 
theory  and  practice — anticipates  what  later  becomes  ortho- 
doxy^; while  the  Apostolic  usage  survives  in  the  Apostolic 
Fathers,  though  they  have  no  very  clear  consciousness  of 
what  it  involved.  The  episcopate  in  Ignatius  has  high 
political  or  congregational  significance,  but  no  sacerdotal. 
His  bishop  is  no  priest,  and  to  him  dvataariipLov  and  m6<? 
are  alike  spiritual.  This  was  the  more  remarkable  as  the 
priesthood  of  the  Old  Testament  was  early  used  as  a 
standard  of  comparison  or  ideal  of  the  order  that  ought  to 
be  realized  by  the  ministry  of  the  New,  which  yet  is  not 
invested  with  priestly  character  or  functions.^  In  the  Aiha^n 
the  prophet  has  displaced  the  priest.®  The  apologists 

^ I Peter  ii.  5. 

2 James  i.  27. 

® To  attempt  detailed  proof  of  this  position  is  more  than  our  limits  will 
allow,  but  one  may  say  the  ecclesiastical  significance  of  Gnosticism  is  only 
beginning  to  be  understood.  Since  the  text  was  written,  Harnack’s 
examination  of  the  “ Pistis-Sophia  has  appeared ; and  it  bears  directly 
on  the  points  mentioned.  See  pp.  59  ff.  Cf.  Koffmane’s  “ Gnosis 
nach  ihrer  Tendenz  u.  Organisation.” 

Clemens,  i.  40,  43,  44. 

^ xiii.  3. 


THE  SACERDOTAL  TENDENCY. 


103 


labour  strenuously  to  explain  how  Christianity,  though  with- 
out the  sacerdotalism  characteristic  of  the  then  recognized 
worships,  is  yet  a religion  ; how  its  temples,  altars,  and 
sacrifices  are  all  inner  and  spiritual,  its  incense  the  secret 
prayer  and  the  pure  conscience,  its  statuary  the  new  man 
with  his  graces  and  virtues,  its  adornments  or  priestly  vest- 
ments his  temperance,  courage,  wisdom,  piety.^  To  Justin 
Martyr,  Christians  were  the  true  high-priestly  race  ; they  offer 
the  sacrifices  well-pleasing  to  God,  the  prayer  and  thanks- 
giving which  He  loves  to  accept  when  offered  by  the  worthy.^ 
With  Irenaeus  the  sacerdotal  dignity  is  the  portion  of  the 
just,  and  the  sanctified  heart,  the  holy  life,  faith,  obedience, 
righteousness,  are  the  sacrifices  God  loves.^  The  choicest 
altar  was  the  service  of  the  needy  ; to  minister  to  man  was 
to  sacrifice  to  God.  Clement  of  Alexandria  refused  to  regard 
any  as  priest  save  the  Gnostic,  him  who  can  offer  the  sacrifice 
of  praise  and  burn  the  incense  of  holy  prayer."*  There  was 
a distinction  of  offices,  but  no  sacred  order  exercising  their 
functions  by  virtue  of  some  inalienable  grace.  The  Eucharist 
was  congregational — it  was  a common  meal  and  a collective 
thanksgiving,  not  a sacrifice  dependent  on  officials  for  its 
efficacy  ^ ; there  was  “ liberty  of  prophesying  ” ; the  individual 

^ “ Cont.  Cels.,”  viii.  17.  Cf.  vii.  62  ; Minuc.  P'elix,  “Oct.,”  8,  10,  32. 

* “Dial.,”  1 16,  1 17,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  392  ff.  Cf.  “Apol.,”  i.  13,  67. 

® iv.  8,  3 ; 17,  4:  V.  34,  3. 

^ Strom.,  vii.  7,  § 36:  Ovtos  apa  ovtcos  6 ^aaiXiKos  avdpconos,  ovtos  Upevs 
oGLos  Tov  Beov.  Cf.  iv.  25,  ii.  18;  Paed.,  iii.  12.  For  the  sacrifice  which  is 
acceptable  to  God,  Str,,  v.  ii. 

5 Clem.  ; i Cor.  xli.  i ; Did.,  ix.,  x.,  xiv. ; Ig.  Smyr.,  8 ; Eph.,  20  ; Philad.,  4 ; 
Justin,  “Apol.,”  i.  65-67.  The  evidence  seems  to  warrant  the  inference  that 
the  congregation  was  necessary  to  the  act,  but  not  a clerical  order  or  person. 
The  injunctions  of  Ignatius  imply  that  customs  other  than  those  he  re- 
commended prevailed,  and  his  words  are  hortatory  rather  than  authoritative. 
Justin’s  president  is  no  priest,  but  one  of  the  brethren : irpoco-T^s  to3v  ddeXcfiwv, 
not  Upevs  or  dpxi^p^vs.  Tertullian’s  words  are  clear  : “ Nonne  et  laici 
sacerdotes  sumus  ? . . . Differentiam  inter  ordinem  et  plebem  constituit 
ecclesiae  auctoritas,  et  honor  per  ordinis  consessum  sanctificatus.  Adeo 
ubi  ecclesiastici  ordinis  non  est  consessus,  et  offers  et  tinguis  et  sacerdos 
es  tibi  solus  Sed  ubi  tres,  ecclesia  est,  licet  laici.  . . . Omnes  nos  Deus 


104 


EVOLUTION  OF  THE  PRIESTHOOD 


society  or  church  could  exercise  discipline,  could  even  institute 
or  depose  its  officers. 

But  change  is  in  the  air ; the  fatal  word  is  spoken  by 
Tertullian,  who  in  this  shows  the  legal  mind  below  the 
Montanist  temper.  He  speaks  of  the  “ sacerdotale  officium 
which  virgins  cannot  enter, ^ of  a “ sacerdotalis  disciplina  ” 
and  the  “jus  sacerdotis,”  ^ of  an  “ordo  sacerdotalis”  and  the 
“ sacerdotalia  munera.”  ^ He  names  the  bishop  “ summus 
sacerdos  ” and  “ pontifex  maximus.”  ^ Hippolytus  in  Italy 
claims  for  himself,  as  successor  of  the  Apostles,  the  high- 
priesthood  ® ; while  Origen  in  Alexandria,  though  he  holds  to 
the  universal  priesthood  and  spiritual  sacrifices,®  yet  taxes  his 
ingenuity  to  unfold  the  likeness  of  the  new  ministry  to  the 
ancient  priesthood.'^  In  the  Apostolic  constitutions  the  bishop 
is  frequently  designated  /epeu?,®  and  even  But  it  was 

the  hands  of  Cyprian  that  studiously  clothed  the  new  clergy 
in  all  the  dignities  of  the  old  priesthood,  and  provided  it 
with  appropriate  sacrificial  functions  and  intercessory  duties. 
With  him  the  bishop  is  uniformly  “sacerdos,”  his  colleagues 
“ consacerdotes,”  and  the  presbyters  are  those  “ cum  episcopo 
sacerdotali  honore  conjunct!.”^®  But,  of  course,  the  creation 
of  a priesthood  involves  the  institution  of  a priestly  service ; 
the  “ sacerdotium  ” cannot  live  unless  there  be  a “ sacrificium.” 
There  was  only  one  rite  that  could  be  made  to  serve  this  pur- 
pose; and  so  the  simple  and  beautiful  institution  of  the  Supper 

ita  vult  dispositos  esse,  ut  ubique  sacramentis  ejus  obeundis  apti  simus  ” 
(“De  Exh.  Cast.,”  7).  Cf.  “ De  Monog.,”  7,  ii,  12. 

1 “ De  Virg.  Vel.,”  9. 

2 “ De  Monog.,”  12  ; “ De  Exh.  Cast.,”  7. 

3 “ De  Exh.  Cast.,”  7 ; “ De  Praescr.  Haer.,”  41. 

“De  Baptis.,”  17;  “ De  Pudic.,”  1. 

^ ‘‘  Refut.  Omn.  Haer.,”  Proem,  ^eTe^ovres  ap;(iepareta?  re  /cat  dibacr- 
KoXias. 

® “ Homil.  in  Lev.,”  ix.  9,  10  (ed.  Lorn.,  vol.  ix.,  pp.  360-364). 

^ “ In  Evang.  loh.,”  tom.  i.  3 (ed.  Lorn.,  vol.  i.,  p.  9). 

® ii.  34,  35,  36;  vi.  15,  18. 

» ii.  27,  57. 

'0  “ Ep.,”  61,  2.  Cf.  I,  3 ; 4,  4 ; 65,2;  66,  3 ; 67,  i ; 72,  3 ; 73,  7. 


CHANGES  THE  RELIGION. 


105 


shares  the  transformation  of  the  ministry.  It  becomes  the 
“sacrificium  dominicum,”  and  the  priests  who  stand  in  the 
place  of  Christ  offer  a true  and  full  sacrifice  in  the  Church 
to  God  the  Father,  and  can  say,  “ Passio  est  domini  sacri- 
ficium quod  offerimus.”^  While  the  old  and  noble  conception, 
which  was  so  integral  an  element  of  the  Apostolic  Gospel, 
of  the  collective  spiritual  priesthood,  altogether  disappears, 
the  officials  become  sacrosanct  and  “ dispensatores  Dei.”  ^ 
The  development  is  not  complete,  but  it  is  begun.  The 
ancient  ideal  died  hard  ; reminiscences  of  it  may  be  found 
in  Cyprian  himself,  in  Augustine,  in  Leo  the  Great,  even  in 
Aquinas,  nay,  in  the  very  Catholicism  of  to-day,  but  they 
only  help  to  illustrate  the  continuity  of  the  evolutional 
process  and  measure  the  vastness  of  the  change. 

But,  now,  what  were  the  causes  of  this  change?  Neander 
thinks  that  the  idea  of  an  official  priesthood  came  into 
Christianity  from  Judaism®;  Ritschl  that  it  was  due  to 
the  inability  of  the  Gentile  Christians  to  understand  the 
Gospel.^  Both  factors  are  needed — the  one  acted  upon  the 
religion  from  within,  the  other  from  without.  The  men  who 
interpreted  the  New  Testament  through  the  Old  interpreted 
first  the  law  and  then  the  priesthood  of  the  Old  into  the  New. 
They  were  made  parallel— the  later  and  spiritual  was  assimi- 
lated to  the  older  and  sacerdotal,  the  antitype  was  resolved 
into  the  type,  the  substance  into  the  shadow.  What  Cyprian 
shows  us  is  a rejuvenescent  Judaism,  the  kingdom  of  the 
truth  translated  into  a kingdom  of  priests.  But  this  internal 

^ “Ep.,”  63,  Ad  Caecilium,  14,  17  ; cf.  4,  5,  6,  7,  9. 

^ “ Ep.,”  59,  6.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  measure  the  distance  between 
the  ideal  minister  of  Christ  or  the  apostle  of  Paul  and  the  priest  of 
Cyprian.  Indeed,  the  two  things  are  quite  incommensurable  ; they  belong 
to  altogether  different  orders.  If  we  study  epistles  like  the  fifty-ninth 
or  sixty-third  after  the  Gospels  or  Paul,  we  feel  how  the  return  of  the 
priest  has  effected  a revolution  in  the  religion. 

Church  History,”  i.  270,  271  (Bohn’s  ed.). 

^“Altkathol.  Kirche,”  394. 


I06  HEBREW  AND  GENTILE  CAUSES. 

factor  could  not  have  sufficed  without  the  external.  Men 
who  had  never  known  any  but  priestly  religions  could  not 
easily  understand  one  altogether  priestless.  At  first  two 
things  helped  them  : its  very  strangeness,  its  absolute  anti- 
thesis to  the  familiar  and  the  received  ; and,  next,  its  appear- 
ing as  a new  opinion  or  belief,  which  spread  by  preaching 
or  discourse,  and  could  be  taken  as  a philosophy.  But  the 
more  it  established  itself  as  a religion,  the  more  men,  both 
without  and  within,  tended  to  expect  or  seek  in  it  the  forms 
and  offices  that  everywhere  else  prevailed.  They  found  it 
easier  to  adjust  the  religion  to  themselves  than  themselves 
to  the  religion.  Their  minds  were  not  sheets  of  clean  white 
paper  on  which  its  truths  could  be  clearly  written,  but  pages 
crowded  with  the  records,  habits,  customs,  beliefs,  of  im- 
memorial yesterdays ; and  the  lines  of  the  new  could  not 
but  often  mingle  and  blend  with  those  of  the  ancient  writing. 
A religion  without  a priesthood  was  what  no  man  had 
known  ; a sacred  order  on  earth  seemed  as  necessary  to 
worship  as  the  very  being  of  the  gods  in  heaven.  The 
temple  was  the  centre  of  the  State,  but  it  was  idle  without 
a priesthood,  and  without  it  the  oracle  was  dumb.  And  so 
these  two  forces,  inveterate  and  invariable  association  and  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures,  combined  to  work  the  change.  With- 
out the  universal  sacerdotalism  there  would  have  been  no 
adequate  impulse  or  occasion,  without  the  Scriptures  no 
sufficient  authority  or  warrant ; it  was  the  correlation  of  the 
two  that  made  the  change  at  once  natural  and  inevitable.^ 


^ Tertiillian  may  be  said  to  represent  the  heathen  tendency,  Cyprian  the 
Hebrew.  The  former  allows  himself  a large  rhetorical  latitude,  and  glides 
easily  into  the  use  of  the  same  terms  for  the  Christian  as  for  the  heathen 
office  (cf.  “Ad.  Uxor.,”  i.  6,  7 ; “Scorp.,”  7;  “Ad  Nati.,”  i.  7,  “De 
Monog.,”  12;  “ De  leiun.,”  16;  “ De  Pall.,”  i.  4);  but  the  latter  is  care- 
ful and  discriminative  alike  in  the  terms  he  uses  and  his  sources  and  modes 
of  proof.  His  thought  is  governed  by  the  ideal  of  the  Old  Testament 
priesthood. 


THE  ECCLESIA  BECOMES  A CIVITAS. 


lo; 


§ IV.— Thought  and  Organization  in  the  Western 

Church. 

These  indeed  so  move  together  as  to  be  different  aspects  of 
one  process  ; the  thought  a man  expresses  in  speech  or  in  a 
system,  a society  expresses  in  its  institutions  or  laws.  That 
the  thought  of  the  most  eminent  man  in  the  then  Christian 
society  was  penetrated  by  the  principles  and  ideas  of  Roman 
jurisprudence,  is  evidence  that  the  spirit  or  genius  of  Rome 
had  begun  to  organize  the  Church.  It  was  not  by  chance 
that  it  came  to  be  conceived  as  a “ civitas  ” ; the  name 
expressed  the  simple  truth.  It  was  no  mere  substitution 
of  a Latin  for  a Greek  term  ; “ civitas  Dei  ” did  not  translate 

TToXt?  Oeov  ^covTo^.  IIoXLf;  and  “ civitas  ” might  alike  denote 
a society  of  men  organized  under  a common  authority  and 
governed  by  common  laws,  but  the  vroXt?  was  a city  of  free 
men  living  within  defined  geographical  limits,  while  the 
“civitas”  had  become  a universal  empire  with  its  chief 
citizen  as  emperor.  The  TroXt?  could  not  be  without  its 
iKKXrjaia,  its  assembly  of  free  citizens,  or  the  “ civitas  ” with- 
out its  Caesar,  even  though  he  might  condescend  to  mask  his 
power  under  the  forms  of  the  Senate.  Now,  in  the  West  the 
Greek  sense  and  connotation  of  7roXt9  and  eKKXrjaia  were  lost, 
but  the  Roman  sense  and  connotation  of  “ civitas  ” remained ; 
and  so  the  Church  was  conceived  not  as  a society  of  freeborn 
men,  governed  by  its  choicest  because  wisest  sons,  but  as  an 
iinpe7'iuin  under  an  Imperator,  ruled  by  ministers  he  alone 
could  appoint  and  he  alone  depose.  In  other  words,  the 
clergy  became  the  Church,  the  Church  the  religion,  and  the 
religion  a transformed  Roman  Empire,  with  the  Pope  for 
emperor,  bishops  for  procurators,  and  the  priesthood  for  the 
magistrates  and  legionaries  that  levied  the  taxes,  enforced 
the  laws,  upheld  the  unity,  and  maintained  the  peace  of  the 
civilized  world.  Papal  infallibity  is  but  imperial  supremacy 


I08  THE  CHURCH  SUPERSEDES  THE  EMPIRE, 

transfigured  and  spiritualized.  The  Catholic  Church  could  not 
have  been  without  Christianity,  but  still  less  could  it  have 
been  without  Roman  imperialism.  It  owes  its  life  to  the 
one,  but  its  distinctive  organization  to  the  other.  The  very 
forces  that  disorganized  the  civil  body  helped  to  organize 
the  ecclesiastical.  Apart  from  Rome,  and  Rome  decadent, 
with  the  imperial  ideal  and  organism,  but  without  the 
imperial  spirit,  Catholicism  could  never  have  come  into  being. 
If  the  Church  had  passed  the  first  five  centuries  of  its 
existence  under  an  Oriental  despotism  or  amid  free  Greek 
cities,  its  structure  would  have  been  altogether  different.  It 
seemed  to  vanquish  the  Empire,  but  the  Empire  by  assimi- 
lating survived  in  it ; the  name  was  the  name  of  Christ 
but  the  form  was  the  form  of  Caesar. 

The  more  elaborate  the  organization  became,  the  more  it 
reacted  on  thought,  demanded  idealization  and  justification 
at  its  hands.  The  philosophy  of  Tertullian  was  worked  into 
an  anthropology,  and  stated  in  terms  derived  from  Paul. 
Man  lived  in  Adam,  bore  his  nature  and  inherited  his  sin. 
But  now  a jurisprudence  unknown  to  Paul  and  quite  alien 
to  him  was  so  introduced  as  to  create  a new  and  fateful 
system  of  ideas.  As  the  whole  race  was  of  one  sin  because 
of  one  descent,  it  was  also  of  one  guilt — stood  before  God 
culpable,  condemned.  The  individual  was  lost  in  the  race ; 
the  collective  sin  involved  personal  blame  and  penalty.  At 
one  stroke,  then,  humanity  in  its  natural  state  became  a mass 
of  perdition,  and  certain  of  the  most  distinctively  Pauline 
positions  forgotten  or  their  antitheses  frankly  affirmed.  But 
over  against  this  lost  mass  was  placed  the  saved  society, 
construed,  too,  through  the  law  and  polity  of  Rome.  The 
attributes  of  Christ  were  transferred  to  the  Church  ; yet 
to  a Church  radically  transformed  by  being  made  into 
a Roman  “ civitas.”  To  be  in  it — i.e.^  to  be  a naturalized 
citizen — was  to  be  saved  ; to  be  outside  it  was  to  have  no 
part  or  lot  in  its  privileges,  to  be  without  all  its  good.  The 


AND  IS  AS  THE  EMPIRE  IT  SUPERSEDES.  IO9 

conditions  of  entrance  were  in  the  hands  of  its  officers ; 
baptism  naturalized,  admitted  to  citizenship  ; the  Eucharist 
maintained  and  developed  what  baptism  had  given.  And, 
then,  as  thought  and  organization  corresponded,  they  could 
be  made  to  justify  each  other.  Augustine  argued  at  one 
point : “ Men  must  be  by  nature  guilty  and  lost,  otherwise 
the  baptism  of  infants  would  not  be  necessary”;  and  at 
another  he  with  equal  conviction  and  reason  argued  : “ Since 
infant  baptism  is  necessary,  man  must  be  by  nature 
depraved  and  condemned.”  The  race  was  not  so  much 
sinful  in  the  religious  as  guilty  in  the  forensic  sense,  and 
the  Church  which  saved  it  was,  while  instituted  by  grace, 
yet  political  in  form,  legal  in  method,  and  juristic  in  its 
regulative  principle.  Of  course  the  thought  and  organization 
did  not  stand  alone.  The  East  did  not  cease  to  influence  the 
West.  Augustine  studied  theology  and  the  Church  through 
Plato  as  well  as  through  Roman  polity,  and  to  this  source  he 
owed  the  lofty  idealism  which  gave  to  his  system  all  its  dignity 
and  all  its  power.  Indeed,  the  Roman  institution  received 
its  final  apotheosis  through  neo-Platonism  at  the  hands  of  the 
pseudo-Dionysius  ; as  he  coneeives  it,  symbolism  reigns  in 
heaven  and  on  earth,  a celestial  hierarchy  holds  the  approaches 
to  God  above,  an  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  guards  and  regulates 
them  below,  and  men  are  graduated  according  to  the  degree 
of  their  initiation  in  the  holy  mysteries  which  at  once  reveal 
and  conceal  the  ineffable  Godhead.  No  book  exercised  a 
mightier  influence  on  Catholicism,  did  more  on  the  one 
hand  to  foster  its  mysticism,  on  the  other  to  develop  its 
sacerdotalism.  It  moulded  in  an  equal  degree  men  so  dis- 
similar as  Scotus  Erigena  and  Thomas  Aquinas,  Hugo  of 
St.  Victor  and  Thomas  a Becket,  Grosseteste  and  Dante; 
and  yet  it  was  but  neo-Platonism  made  to  speak  with  the 
Catholic  tongue. 

We  may  then  summarize  the  results  of  our  discussion 
thus : While  Greek  philosophy,  as  the  main  formal  factor  of 


I 10 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION. 


Greek  theology,  had  worked  out  a scientific  conception  of 
God,  metaphysically  rich,  though  ethically  poor,  especially 
in  those  elements  most  distinctive  of  the  Christian  religion 
and  history,  Roman  polity  and  law,  as  the  main  formal 
factors  of  the  Latin  mind,  had  combined  to  effect  the  evolu- 
tion of  a system  that  made  the  Church  a new  empire  and 
man  by  nature  criminal,  condemned  because  of  alienation 
from  his  sovereign.  The  popular  had  incorporated  with  the 
Christian  religion  ideas  which  changed  it  from  a system 
priestless  and  spiritual  into  one  sacerdotal  and  sensuous.  The 
result  of  these  changes  was  a radical  change  of  the  religion. 
The  life  it  had  it  owed  to  its  Founder,  the  form  it  owed 
to  its  conditions  ; and  there  is  nothing  that  so  proves  His 
divinity  as  His  being  able  still  to  live  and  still  to  act  within 
forms  so  little  congenial  to  His  Spirit. 


CHAPTER  VI 


SCHOLA  STICISM. 


ITH  the  formation  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  Churches 


change  did  not  cease.  It  went  on  under  conditions 


and  factors  old  and  new.  We  cannot  trace  it  in  the  East, 
and  must  be  content  with  the  briefest  possible  sketch  of  its 
course  in  the  West. 

§ I.— The  New  Races  and  the  Old. 

As  the  Church  had  superseded  the  Empire,  it  was  but 
natural  that  she  should  occupy  its  ancient  seat.  The  place 
was  a necessary  part  of  the  idea.  Rome  was  accustomed 
to  rule  the  world,  and  the  world  was  accustomed  to  the 
rule  of  Rome.  In  the  capital  the  habits  of  direction  and 
administration  had  become  instinctive,  and  in  the  provinces 
those  of  reverence  and  obedience.  And,  indeed,  with  a 
conservatism  greater  than  the  later  empire  had  known,  the 
reigning  head  of  the  Church  lived  in  Italy,  and  was  selected 
almost  always  from  men  of  Italian  birth.  And  so  it 
happened  that  a religion  Palestinian  in  origin  and  Greek 
in  theology  became  as  Roman  in  polity,  Roman  also  in 
power.  Its  Holy  Land  of  reminiscence  and  imagination 
was  in  the  East ; but  the  Holy  Land  of  its  experience,  as 
seat  of  the  authority  it  recognized  and  source  of  the  laws 
it  obeyed,  was  Italy.  And  Italy  was  satisfied  with  possessing 
the  power  its  inherited  ambitions  and  capacities  so  well 
qualified  it  to  organize  and  administer. 


II2 


ROME  AS  IMPERIAL,  POLITICAL, 


But  alongside  the  centralization  of  power  stands  what 
we  may  call  the  distribution  of  thought.  While  the  Empire 
survived  as  the  Papacy,  philosophy  survived  as  Scholasticism  ; 
and  in  obedience  to  the  law  which  has  always  governed  their 
relations,  authority  resided  in  the  capital,  but  philosophy 
consulted  her  dignity  and  independence  by  living  in  the 
provinces.  So  it  was  when  the  Caesars  ruled,  so  it  remained 
when  the  Popes  governed.  Athens  and  Alexandria,  Tarsus 
and  Antioch,  offered  a more  congenial  home  to  learning  and 
philosophy  than  imperial  Rome,  and  ecclesiastical  Rome  left 
the  kindly  nursing  of  Scholasticism  to  Paris,  Oxford,  and 
Cologne.  Authority  is  apt  to  be  jealous  and  philosophy 
to  be  critical,  and  so  the  two  agree  best  when  their  respective 
seats  are  distant  enough  to  prevent  the  shocks  of  too  sharp 
and  too  frequent  collision.  Philosophy,  when  remote  from 
authority,  can  idealize  it,  and  even  render  it  a generous,  be- 
cause a not  too  exacting,  obedience ; authority,  when  it  feels 
free  from  a criticism  too  intimate  and  curious,  can  tolerate 
philosophy  and  even  accept  its  courteous  homage.  And  so 
it  has  invariably  happened  that  seats  of  empire  have  not 
been  homes  of  living  philosophies  ; the  men  to  whom  the 
machinery  of  Church  or  State  is  everything  have,  as  a rule, 
but  little  taste  and  less  patience  for  those  ideas  and  ideals 
which  are  at  once  the  puzzle  and  the  joy  of  the  speculative 
reason. 

Hence  we  have  within  the  bosom  of  the  Latin  Church 
a distinction  between  North  and  South  which  curiously 
reflects  and  repeats  the  distinction  between  East  and  West. 
The  newer  peoples  stood  to  the  intellectual  or  philosophical 
material  in  the  religion  more  as  did  the  Greek,  the  older 
to  the  political  and  administrative  more  as  did  the  Roman. 
Indeed,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  history  is  the 
way  in  which,  as  the  speculative  energies  of  the  old  races 
decayed,  those  of  the  new  peoples  developed  and  grew. 
What  excited  their  enthusiasm  and  roused  them  to  strenuous 


BUT  THE  PROVINCES  INTELLECTUAL.  II3 

• 

exertions  was  the  endeavour  to  translate  the  belief  they  had 
received  into  a reasoned  philosophy.  And  so  from  the  eighth 
century  onward,  right  through  the  period  of  Scholasticism, 
the  constructive  intellect  was  as  specifically  Northern  as  the 
political  and  administrative  was  Italian.  The  questions  and 
controversies  that  mark  the  end  of  the  old  world  and  the 
beginning  of  the  new  are  grouped  round  the  names  of  Baeda 
and  Alcuin,  Paschasius  Radbertus  and  Ratramnus,  Rabanus 
Maurus  and  John  the  Scot,  Gottschalk  and  Hincmar  of 
Rheims — men  all  sprung  from  the  new  stock.  And  their 
pre-eminence  becomes  even  more  evident  in  the  high  days 
of  Scholasticism.  Anselm,  though  of  Italian  birth,  was  of 
Northern  blood  and  culture  ; the  same  may  be  said  of  Peter 
the  Lombard  ; and  of  Thomas  Aquinas  it  is  enough  to  say 
that  he  had  in  his  veins  the  blood  of  the  Norman  and  the 
Hohenstaufen,  and  his  activity  as  learner  and  teacher  is  mainly 
associated  with  Paris  and  Cologne.  Even  Bonaventura  could 
not  have  been  the  schoolman  he  was  without  Paris  and  its 
great  masters.  But  when  we  turn  from  these,  the  action 
of  the  pure  Northern  mind  on  all  the  tendencies  of  mediaeval 
religious  thought  is  seen  to  be  enormous.  Roscellinus  and 
Abelard  were  alike  sons  of  Brittany.  Of  the  names  con- 
nected with  the  famous  school  of  St.  Victor,  its  founder, 
William  of  Champeaux,  was  a Frenchman,  Hugo  was  a 
German,  Richard  a Scot.  The  greatest  scholar  of  all  the 
schoolmen,  Albertus  Magnus,  was  a German,  and  Germans, 
too,  were  the  noblest  representatives  of  the  highly  transcen- 
dental form  of  piety  we  call  mysticism,  Eckhardt  and  Tauler, 
Henry  Suso,  and  the  anonymous  author  of  the  “ Theologia 
Germanica ; ” while  of  immediate  kin  were  Ruysbroeck, 
Thomas  a Kempis,  and  the  Brothers  of  the  Common  Lot. 
England,  too,  had  its  famous  Schoolmen, — men  like  Robert 
Pulleyn,  who,  though  not  the  oldest  “ Magister  Sententiarum,” 
was  yet  older  than  Peter  Lombard ; John  of  Salisbury, 
critical,  sceptical  of  speculation  aryd  speculative  methods, 

8 


1 14  the  new  mind  constructive, 

but  full  of  admiration  for  the  saintly  life  ; Alexander  of 
Hales,  who  had  the  strength  and  the  foresight  to  naturalize 
in  the  Christian  schools  the  Aristotle  that  had  issued,  re- 
habilitated and  living,  from  the  Moorish ; Duns  Scotus, 
acutest  of  schoolmen,  high  ideal  realist,  metaphysical  as 
became  a Scot,  yet  practical  as  one  to  whom  the  ultimate 
reality  was  the  all-efficient  Will  ; Roger  Bacon,  student  of 
nature  as  of  theology,  seeking  to  reform  the  study  of  both 
by  the  use  of  new  methods,  and  to  rescue  man  from  the 
dominion  of  a pseudo-Aristotle ; William  of  Occam,  nomi- 
nalist, yet  Franciscan,  making  his  scepticism  the  more  potent 
a solvent  that  it  was  veiled  under  the  most  rigorous  respect 
for  authority.  But  it  would  become  a mere  tedious  catalogue 
of  now-forgotten  names  were  we  to  attempt  to  enumerate 
the  men  of  Northern  blood  who  served  the  mediaeval  Church 
by  turning  her  traditions  and  her  creed  into  a living  philo- 
sophy. Great  as  were  the  services  of  the  Roman  Church 
to  the  young  peoples,  their  services  to  her  were  greater  still. 
If  she  gave  them  a polity  and  a ritual,  they  gave  her  a 
reasoned  if  not  a reasonable  faith.  She,  because  of  her 
imperial  ancestry,  was  able  to  give  the  ideas  and  mechanism 
of  law,  the  love  of  order,  the  spirit  at  once  of  authority  and 
obedience  ; but  they,  because  of  their  fresh  enthusiasms,  un- 
exhausted and  unvexed  with  centuries  of  fruitless  attempting 
to  read  the  riddles  of  the  race,  were  able  to  labour  at 
building  her  inchoate  intellectual  material  into  a living  and 
articulated  body  of  reasoned  beliefs.  And  theirs  was  the 
nobler  work : the  Church  was  but  the  vehicle  of  ancient 
custom  and  law  ; but  the  new  mind  was  the  first  to  naturalize 
reason  in  religion,  to  claim  that  its  whole  realm  should  lie 
open  to  the  searching  eye  of  constructive  and  interpretative 
thought.  Its  action  in  the  first  instance  was  in  the  service 
of  the  Roman  Church,  but  only  that  it  might  in  the  last 
instance  be  more  effective  in  the  service  of  the  truth. 


GIVES  NEW  READING  OF  OLD  PROBLExMS. 


IIS 


§ II.— The  New  Races  and  the  Old  Problems. 

This  new  mind,  then,  came,  with  all  its  unexercised  energies 
and  untempered  curiosities,  to  the  old  problems,  and  endea- 
voured to  solve  them  by  the  help  of  the  only  factors  it  knew. 
For  it  the  earlier  theology  of  the  East  could  hardly  be  said 
to  exist ; it  was  written  in  a little-known  tongue,  used  by 
men  who  denied  the  filioque,  and  were  heretics.  The  belief 
in  the  dignity  and  sanity  of  human  nature,  in  the  freedom  of 
the  will,  in  the  affinity  of  God  and  man  which  was  native  to 
Greek  theology  in  its  golden  age,  was  foreign  to  the  later 
Latin,  nor  had  it  the  literary  and  historical  sense,  so  necessary 
to  the  interpretation  of  a religion  that  lives  by  its  sacred 
books,  which  had  marked  the  great  scholars  of  the  East, 
especially  Origen,  Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  and  Chrysostom. 
Scotus  Erigena  had  indeed  something  of  the  Oriental  mystic- 
ism and  speculative  audacity,  but  his  system  was  a theosophy, 
not  a theology,  and  his  master  no  veritable  Greek  Father,  but 
the  late  fantastic  and  hierarchical  pseudo-Dionysius.  The 
man  that  set  the  problems  of  the  new  mind  was  Augustine, 
and  his  theology  was  full  of  unreconciled  antitheses.  It 
reflects  at  once  his  intellect  and  his  history  ; the  dualism 
that  was  native  to  his  soul  is  inherent  in  his  system.  He 
never  transcended  it  in  experience,  and  it  always  dominated 
his  thought.  The  basis  of  his  intellect  was,  as  it  were,  neo- 
Platonic,  but  the  forms  under  and  within  which  it  worked 
were  Manichean.  These,  indeed,  had  many  and  subtle  inter- 
relations. Neo-Platonism  hated  matter,  feared  the  senses, 
cultivated  asceticism  and  ecstasy  as  means  by  which  they 
could  be  transcended.  The  Manichee  believed  the  spirit  to 
be  alone  good  and  real,  the  flesh  to  be  altogether  evil  and 
devilish.  And  this  dualism  remained  within  the  system  of 
Augustine,  but  under  forms  which  were  determined  by  his 
experience.  He  read  it  into  Paul,  and  expressed  it  in  the 


Il6  AUGUSTINE:  HIS  INNATE  DUALISM 

forms  of  the  Pauline  antitheses.  He  read  it  into  the  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  forms  which  confronted  him,  and  articulated 
it  into  his  theory  of  the  two  civitates^ — of  God,  which  was  the 
Church  ; of  man,  which  was  Rome  republican  and  imperial. 
He  was  forced  to  develop  the  political  form  in  his  con- 
troversy with  the  Donatists,  and  the  theological  in  his 
controversy  with  the  Pelagians  ; but  he  never  reduced  either 
his  principles  or  their  forms  to  consistency.  His  “ Confes- 
siones”  and  his  “ Retractationes  ” but  exhibit  from  his  own 
point  of  view  the  history  of  a mind  whose  external  conflicts 
were  faint  echoes  of  his  internal.  He  never  made  his  theology 
penetrate  his  anthropology,  his  mysticism  qualify  and  clarify 
his  ceremonialism,  his  spiritual  create  and  control  his  political 
ideal.  His  works  are  almost  all  occasional,  torn  from  him 
by  the  necessities  of  the  moment,  exhibiting  all  the  one- 
sidedness and  exaggerations  of  a singularly  rich  and  restless 
mind,  that  throws  itself  successively  on  single  aspects  of  the 
truth,  and  deals  with  each  aspect  as  if  it  were  the  whole. 
He  had  all  the  excellencies  proper  to  one  who  is  in  the  field 
of  controversy  perhaps  the  supremest  master  ; but  his  system 
has  all  the  defects  proper  to  his  pre-eminence  in  this  field — 
z>.,  it  is  in  no  respect  a system,  but  only  a succession  of 
positions  polemically  maintained. 

In  a system  whose  character  so  corresponds  to  its  genesis, 
two  things  are  significant  for  us  here  : the  polity,  or  ideal 
of  the  Christian  society  ; and  the  theology,  or  ideal  of  the 
Christian  truth.  As  regards  fundamental  or  determinative 
principle,  the  one  was  conditional,  but  the  other  was  absolute. 
The  conditionalism  belonged  to  the  very  essence  of  the  polity, 
because  baptism  and  the  Eucharist,  while  respectively  the 
means  of  entrance  into  the  Christian  body  and  the  terms  of 
continuance  within  it,  were  also  sacraments  which  men,  on 
the  one  hand,  could  give  or  withhold,  and  men,  on  the  other, 
accept  or  refuse.  And  the  absolutism  was  of  the  essence  of 
the  theology,  because  God  was  conceived  as  the  omnipotent 


REFLECTED  IN  HIS  SYSTEM. 


II7 


and  ubiquitous  Will  that  fixed  all  destinies  and  determined 
all  events,  and  man  was  conceived  as  unable  to  will  any  good 
thing  till  he  was  changed  of  God.  If  the  conditionalism  of 
the  polity  had  been  consistently  worked  out,  it  would  have 
qualified  the  absolutism  of  the  theology  ; for  if  fulfilled  con- 
ditions could  incorporate  and  maintain  a man  in  the  body  of 
the  saved,  the  will  of  God  no  longer  acted  without  regard  to 
the  acts  of  man.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  absolutism 
of  the  theology,  rigorously  applied,  would  have  repealed  the 
conditionalism  of  the  polity  ; for  where  the  will  of  God  is 
conceived  as  refusing  to  act  in  view  of  motives  or  conditions 
supplied  from  without,  no  system  of  qualifying  acts  or  rites 
can  be  in  place.  On  this  point  the  history  of  religious 
thought  is  conclusive ; no  real  and  rigorous  sacerdotalism 
has  been  able  to  build  on  an  absolute  theology,  and  no 
absolute  theology  has  been  able  to  make  its  home  within  a 
real  and  rigorous  sacerdotalism. 

Out  of  Augustine,  then,  came  questions  enough  for  the  new 
mind,  and  we  can  see  it  from  the  seventh  to  the  eleventh 
century  attempting  to  master  the  world  into  which  it  had 
come,  and,  especially,  to  work  out  what  we  may  call  the 
rudimentary  principles  of  .orientation.  These  were  centuries 
of  great  intellectual  and  political  activity.  The  genius  of  the 
Empire  was  around  and  upon  and  within  the  Church,  working 
out  its  organization.  By  a series  of  felicitous  fictions  laws 
were  found  for  its  regulation,  and  history  made  to  authenticate 
its  claims  and  authorize  its  right  to  the  imperial  city  and  seat. 
By  the  wisdom  first  of  statesmen,  then  of  churchmen,  the 
clergy  were  schooled,  disciplined,  and  qualified  for  their  place 
in  the  stupendous  organism  which  under  the  name  of  the 
Catholic  Church  had  now  come  to  be.  And  the  whole  went 
on  without  fear  of  external  criticism.  The  schools  of  philo- 
sophy were  dead  ; the  ancient  world  with  its  literature  and 
literary  mind  had  perished  ; the  realities  that  lived  were  those 
that  belonged  to  the  Church,  and  these  were  construed  in  its 


Il8  THE  problems' OF  SCHOLASTICISM. 

spirit  and  under  its  eye.  And  so,  though  the  questions  in 
theology  were  set  by  Augustine,  they  were  selected,  under- 
stood, and  handled  in  a manner  which  became  the  minds  thus 
situated.  Directly  out  of  his  Christology,  which  made  Jesus 
as  Son  of  man  the  recipient  of  grace,  rose  the  controversy 
touching  the  natures  and  the  person  of  Christ, — whether  the 
humanity  was  Son  of  God  by  adoption  or  through  the  unity 
of  the  person  shared  in  the  essential  sonship  of  the  Deity. 
Out  of  the  anti-Pelagian  polemic  came  the  question  as  to 
the  “ duplex  Predestinatio,” — whether  the  will  of  God  was 
absolute  as  to  both  election  and  reprobation,  or  only  as  to 
one  ; and,  further,  whether  in  matters  affecting  salvation  the 
will  was  in  any  respect  free  or  altogether  bond.  Out  of  his 
more  spiritual  view  of  the  Sacrament,  as  confronted  by  the 
growing  practice  of  the  Church  to  make  the  Mass  the  central 
act  of  worship,  came  the  Eucharistic  controversy,  whether  the 
elements  do  or  do  not  undergo  substantial  change.  The 
greatest  book  ^ of  the  period  is  concerned  with  this  question, 
and  marks  a moment  when  the  development  of  the  political 
idea  evoked  a correlative  change  in  the  theological.  If  these 
elements  do  not  become  the  veritable  body  and  blood  of 
Christ,  how  can  the  Sacrament  be  .His  perpetuated  sacrifice, 
means  by  which  men  are  reconciled  to  God  and  participate  in 
His  life? 


§ III.— Scholasticism. 

But  if  this  period  was  more  significant  for  polity  than  for 
theology,  the  next,  which  extends  from  the  twelfth  to  the 
sixteenth  century,  was  more  significant  for  theology  than 
polity.  The  former  ends  with  Gregory  VH.  ; the  latter  begins 
with  Anselm  and  is  governed  by  Aristotle.  The  Church  could 
not  escape  from  ancient  philosophy ; when  its  authority  was 
most  absolute,  its  dependence  on  it  was  most  complete.  If 

^ Radbertus,  “ Liber  de  Corpore  et  Sanguine  Christi.”  Migne,  “Patrol.,” 
vol.  cxx. 


UNITY  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  REASON. 


9 


tradition  was  the  organ  of  the  material  factor  in  theology,  the 
Greek  mind  still  supplied  the  formal.  By  a curious  nemesis 
the  Aristotle  whom  the  Eastern  Fathers  had  neglected  for 
Plato,  became  the  Father  of  Scholasticism.  If  Churches  always 
canonized  their  benefactors,  he  would  long  ago  have  been 
at  the  head  of  the  Roman  calendar.  There  were  many 
Schoolmen,  but  they  all  had  one  master,  and  they  built  by 
his  help  and  to  his  honour  systems  that  even  he  would  have 
acknowledged  to  be  encyclopaedic  and  marvels  of  architectonic 
craft.  Their  aim  was  to  exhibit  the  unity  in  thought  which 
the  Church  manifested  in  society  and  politics  ; the  Pope  was 
king  of  men,  theology  was  queen  of  knowledge.  The  hour 
of  his  ascendency  and  of  its  coincided.  The  Papacy  and 
Scholasticism  grew  together,  lived  and  decayed  together.  The 
forces  that  dissolved  mediaeval  thought  disintegrated  the 
Mediaeval  Church. 

Scholasticism  had  three  great  questions — a religious,  a 
theological,  and  a philosophical  ; but  though  formally  differ- 
ent, they  were  all  essentially  one.  The  religious  concerned 
the  relations  of  faith  to  authority  on  the  one  hand  and  to 
knowledge  on  the  other  ; the  theological  concerned  the 
nature,  function,  and  forms  of  the  redemptive  work  ; the 
philosophical  concerned  the  conditions,  the  methods,  and 
the  objects  of  knowledge.  Anselm,  distinctly  the  most 
original  and  creative  of  all  the  mediaeval  theologians,  may 
be  said  to  have  determined  either  the  rise  or  the  special 
form  of  all  three. 

I.  The  religious  question  was  directly  raised  by  the  relation 
of  the  Church  to  the  awakening  intellect.  That  relation  had 
become  something  quite  other  than  it  was  in  the  patristic 
period.  Organization  had  increased,  and,  as  it  were,  indi- 
vidualized authority ; the  claim  to  command  kings  involved 
the  right  to  control  mind,  to  legislate  for  thought.  But  just 
as  this  claim  became  acutest  philosophy  awoke  from  its  long 
sleep,  and  men  were  forced  suddenly  and  consciously  to  face 


20 


CREDO  UT  INTELLIGAM. 


the  whole  furniture  and  contents  of  their  own  minds,  and 
to  ask,  Whence  ? how  ? in  what  manner  and  according  to 
what  order  did  we  come  by  this  wonderful  body  of  beliefs 
which  we  hold,  this  marvellous  structure  of  doctrine  we 
confess?  Was  reason  first?  or  was  faith — i.e.^  the  Church? 
Do  we  believe  because  we  know  ? or  do  we  know  because  we 
believe?  Anselm  said:  “ Neque  enim  quaero  intelligere,  ut 
credam  ; sed  credo,  ut  intelligam.”  ^ Abelard  replied,  in  the 
words  of  Jesus,  the  son  of  Sirach  : “ Qui  credit  cito,  levis 
corde  est,”  ^ and  argued  that  reason  was  of  God,  and  had,  as 
philosophy  showed,  found  God.  Men  believed  not  because 
a thing  was  spoken,  but  because  they  were  convinced  of  its 
truth.  Faith  alone  was  the  supposition  of  things  not  seen, 
but  knowledge  the  experience  of  the  very  things  themselves  ; 
and  so  only  through  knowledge  will  faith  be  made  perfect.^ 

They  thus  differed  as  regards  the  sequence  or  relative 
priority  of  faith  and  reason,  but  not  as  regards  their  ultimate 
harmony.  Without  this  harmony  neither  faith  nor  reason 
could  be  satisfied  ; were  they  to  remain  in  conflict,  either  the 
one  or  the  other  must  be  sacrificed,  and  the  sacrifice  of  either 
would  be  the  sacrifice  of  something  directly  created  and  sanc- 
tioned of  God.  Hence  Anselm  was  as  anxious  to  satisfy 
reason  as  Abelard — his  intellectual  life  was  one  long  struggle 
to  make  the  objects  or  material  of  faith  become  the  content 
of  the  reason — but  he  wanted  to  make  sure  of  the  objects 
before  he  began  the  process  of  reconciliation.  Yet  his  whole 
endeavour,  alike  in  the  “ Cur  Deus  Homo,”  the  “ Monologium,” 
and  the  “ Proslogium,”  was  a confession  that  a satisfied  reason 
was  necessary  to  the  completion,  the  continuance,  or  even  the 
reality  of  faith.  Beneath,  therefore,  the  difference  as  to  the 
order  or  sequence  of  the  acts,  there  was  agreement  as  to 
their  equal  necessity  and  validity  ; a faith  that  could  not  be 

* " Proslogium,”  i.,  Opera,  p.  30  (ed.  1721). 

2 “ Introd.  ad  Theol.,”  Opera,  p.  1051  (Migne).  Cf.  Ecclesiasticus  xix.  4. 

^ Ibid.,  pp.  1050  ff.  Cf.  “Deutsch,”  Peter  Abalard,  pp.  96  ff.,  433  ff. 


INTELLIGO  UT  CREDAM. 


I2I 


explicated  by  reason  and  justified  to  it,  neither  thinker  could 
have  conceived  as  of  God  or  possessed  of  authority  over  man. 
And  this  remained  a characteristic  of  the  great  constructive 
scholastic  systems ; they  were  essentially  rationalisms,  at- 
tempts to  make  the  matter  of  faith  reasonable  to  the  reason.^ 
And  the  difference  as  to  the  sequence  or  relative  priority 
of  reason  and  faith  was  more  apparent  than  real.  It  is 
evident  that  here  the  chronological  order  is  one  and  the 
logical  order  another.  If  the  first  be  regarded,  Anselm  is 
right  ; if  the  second,  Abelard.  In  the  actual  history  or 
experience  of  the  soul  faith  precedes  reason  ; in  the  logical 
or  ideal  process,  where  the  intellect,  by  the  method  of  analysis 
and  synthesis,  deals  with  the  material  submitted  to  it,  reason 
precedes  faith.  In  the  realm  of  experience  man  begins  with 
facts  ; he  believes  those  who  know.  He  does  not  start  life 
with  a matured  and  furnished  intellect,  but  as  one  who  must 
believe  that  he  may  understand.  Parents,  school,  church — and 
parents  and  school  are  but  a form  of  church — supply  him 
with  a body  of  beliefs ; and  when  he  begins  to  think,  he 
finds  himself  in  possession  of  such  a body.  But  these  beliefs 
become  his  own  by  a process  of  ratiocination,  more  or  less 
conscious.  They  are  not  the  property  of  his  intellect  till 
they  have  been  by  his  intellect  understood  and  assimilated. 
Should  they  turn  out  to  be  beliefs  contrary  to  his  reason,  either 
they  must  cease  to  be  his  or  he  must  cease  to  be  reasonable  ; 
should  they  be  agreeable  to  his  reason,  then  they  become  the 
beliefs  of  his  reason,  or,  more  simply,  of  the  man.  What 
was  first  was  inherited  rather  than  personal  ; what  was  last 
was  personal  rather  than  inherited.  In  the  one  case  faith 

^ This  is  admirably  expressed  by  Anselm  in  the  “Cur  Dens  Homo”  as 
the  aim  of  his  dialectic  : “ Ut  rationabili  necessitate  intelligam  esse  oportere 
omnia  ilia,  quae  nobis  fides  Catholica  de  Christo  credere  praecipit,  si 
volumus  salvari  ” (Lib.  i.,  §25,  p.  86).  Again:  “ Per  uniiis  quaestionis, 
quam  proposuimus,  solutionem,  quicquid  in  Novo  Veteriqiie  Testamento 
continetur,  probatum  intelligo  ” ; and  this  solution  is  so  reached  by  reason 
alone  as  to  be  fitted  to  satisfy  both  Jews  and  pagans  (ii.,  § 22,  p.  96). 


122 


ON  THE  BASIS  OF  FORENSIC  THEOLOGY 


precedes  reason,  in  the  other  reason  precedes  faith.  The 
first  is  a preparatory  and  transitional  state  ; the  second  alone 
is  permanent,  personal,  and  final. 

2.  The  theological  question  was  expressed  in  the  title  of 
Anselm’s  best-known  treatise,  “ Cur  Deus  Homo  ? ” Its  aim, 
true  to  the  spirit  and  tendency  of  the  West,  was  soterio- 
logical  rather  than  Christological — i.e.,  concerned  more  with 
what  the  Person  did  than  what  He  was,  conceiving  the  Person 
through  the  work  and  as  a condition  necessary  to  it.  With 
this  treatise  constructive  theories  of  the  Atonement  beg-in 
to  be.  For  a thousand  years  the  Church  had  lived  without 
making  any  approach  to  a reasonable  doctrine  of  the  death 
of  Christ.  Its  connection  with  redemption  and  the  remission 
of  sins  had  always  been  affirmed,  but  there  had  been  no 
discovery  of  any  real  or  valid  reason  for  the  connection. 
Eminent  and  orthodox  Fathers,  like  Irenaeus  and  Augustine, 
had  made  its  final  cause  the  devil  rather  than  God,  the 
rescue  of  man  by  purchase  from  his  power  but  Anselm 
found  its  final  cause  in  God  rather  than  the  devil.  He 
worked  out  his  theory  on  the  forensic  lines  familiar  to  Latin 
theology.  His  cardinal  principles  were  these  : Sin  withholds 
from  God  the  honour  that  is  His  due  ; it  is  therefore  a debt. 
Where  such  sin  is  the  creditor  must  either  be  satisfied  or 
the  debtor  punished  ; and  satisfaction  must  mean  not  only 
that  the  original  debt  is  paid,  but  that  compensation  is  offered 

^ This  was  not  indeed,  as  is  so  often  represented,  the  uniform  doctrine 
before  Anselm.  It  was  expressly  denied  by  John  of  Damascus;  and 
Athanasius  had  long  before  him  conceived  it  as  a sacrifice  for  the  Father 
against  whom  man  had  sinned.  Yet  the  notion  was  a favourite  one  with 
the  Greek  as  well  as  the  Latin  Fathers.  It  took  scientific  shape  with 
Origen  (in  Matt.  xvi.  8,  tom.  iv.  27  : Lorn,  ed.),  though  he  made  the 
transaction  an  illusion  operated  by  God ; it  was  developed  by  Gregory 
of  Nyssa,  translated  into  a “ pia  fraus  ” by  Ambrose,  is  stated  in  more 
judicious  and  respectful  language  by  Augustine:  “In  hac  redemptione 
tanquam  pretium  pro  nobis  datus  est  sanguis  Christi” — and  in  Gregory 
the  Great  the  humanity  of  Christ  is  the  bait  with  which  God  hooked  that 
fish,  His  old  enemy,  the  devil.  Anselm  dismisses  this  ancient  theory  very 
sharply  (i.  7),  and  with  him  it  may  be  said  to  disappear  from  theology. 


A NEW  DOCTRINE  OF  ATONEMENT  IS  BUILT. 


123 


for  the  loss  sustained  or  the  dishonour  inflicted  by  the  with- 
held payment.  To  give  such  satisfaction  is  impossible  to 
man  or  any  creature,  for  the  utmost  the  creature  can  do  is  to 
fulfil  the  duties  of  the  hour.  He  can  do  no  more  than  obey, 
cannot  collect  such  a surplusage  of  merit  as  would  satisfy 
man’s  infinite  Creditor.  The  being  who  does  it  must  be 
one  who  has  man’s  nature,  that  he  may  act  in  man’s  name  ; 
but  he  must  also  have  God’s  dignity,  that  he  may  satisfy  the 
infinite  claims  of  God  for  the  damage  inflicted  by  man’s 
infinite  sin.  To  do  this  God  became  man,  and  He  did  it 
by  His  sufferings  and  death.  The  theory  was  throughout 
a piece  of  forensic  speculation  ; it  was  the  relations  of  God 
and  man  interpreted  in  the  terms  of  Roman  law,  though  as 
modified  by  Teutonic,  and  as  applied  in  the  penitential 
discipline  of  the  Churchfl  As  such  it  was  fatal  to  the 
kingdom  of  God  as  a reign  of  grace.  The  satisfaction  which 
compensated  the  offended  secured  the  legal  quittance  of  the 
offender  ; the  debt  paid  could  not  be  a debt  forgiven  ; to 
deny  salvation  or  reward  to  any  man  so  redeemed  was  to 

^ These  three  sources  of  the  Anselmic  idea  must  be  recognized ; in  his 
discussion  elements  can  be  recognized  peculiar  to  each  of  the  three. 
Cremer’s  essay  in  the  Studie?i  ti.  Krit.,  1880,  pp.  1-24,  lays  too  much 
stress  on  the  affinity  with  Teutonic  law.  It  may  be  true  that  this  law 
allowed  the  alternative  “ aut  satisfactio  aut  poena,”  but  the  alternative  was 
not  as  unknown  to  Roman  law  as  Cremer  would  make  out.  Satisfaction 
for  a debt  could  be  made  by  a stranger  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
debtor  and  even  against  his  will,  provided  it  were,  with  the  free  consent  of 
the  creditor,  made  in  his  name,  and  on  his  account.  If  the  creditor  were 
satisfied,  though  he  did  not  receive  an  exact  equivalent  for  the  debt,  the 
debtor  was  liberated  (cf.  Dig.,  xlvi.  3,  17,  23,  52;  1.  16,  47,  and  176). 
The  processes  by  which  this  could  be  accomplished  were  significant,  as 
e.g„  “cessio  nominum,”  by  which  a new  creditor  took  the  place  of  the  old, 
and  “delegatio”  or  “ intercessio,”  by  which  a new  replaced  the  old  debtor. 
Both  as  regards  principle  and  process  the  Anselmic  theory  owed  more 
to  Roman  than  to  Teutonic  law.  Of  the  latter  Anselm  can  have  known 
little  ; his  legal  ideas  must  have  come  mainly  from  the  Church  courts  and 
the  Norman  courts,  where  the  rules  were  derived  through  the  Frankish 
from  the  Roman  legislation.  As  to  “ satisfacere  ” and  “satisfactio,”  see 
Dirksen,  sub  vv.,  and  supra^  p.  100. 


124  IN  THEOLOGY  REALISM  IS  CONSTRUCTIVE, 

deny  him  his  most  manifest  rights.  If  grace  was  saved 
by  God  being  made  to  provide  the  person  who  satisfied,  then 
the  whole  became  a preconcerted  transaction,  a sort  of  com- 
mercial drama,  a legal  fiction  sanctioned  by  the  offended 
for  the  good  of  the  offender.  Or  if  the  notion  of  forgiveness 
was  retained  by  the  act  being  transferred  from  the  satisfied 
Father  to  the  satisfying  Son,  then  the  ethical  unity  of  the 
Godhead  was  endangered  and  the  most  serious  of  all  heresies 
endorsed.  Yet  defective  as  was  the  theory,  it  was  the  most 
rational  word  which  had  been  spoken  on  the  question,  and 
introduced  a method  of  speculation  which  has  endured  even 
to  our  own  day. 

3.  The  philosophical  question  was  the  famous  one  as  to 
universals,  or  Nominalism  and  Realism.  The  question  was 
raised  by  a passage  in  Boethius’  translation  of  Porphyry’s 
introduction  to  the  logical  writings  of  Aristotle,  and  concerned 
at  once  the  nature  of  general  terms  and  their  relation  to 
individual  objects.  Anselm,  in  a polemic  against  Roscellinus, 
denounced  those  heretical  dialecticians  “ qui  non  nisi  datum 
vocis  putant  esse  universales  substantias,”  ^ and  his  influence 
made  Realism  for  long  the  dominant  philosophy.  There 
were  three  positions  ; universalia  were  either  ante  rem^  in  re^ 
or  post  7'em.  The  first  was  Platonic  Realism,  and  had  as  its 
representative  Duns  Scotus  ; the  second  was  Aristotelian, 
and  was  held  by  Aquinas ; the  third  was  Nominalism,  and 
had  as  its  great  exponent  William  of  Occam.  The  first 
and  second  as  both  realisms  affirmed  that  universals  were 
realities — the  one  that  they  were  before  things  and  creative 
of  them,  the  other  that  they  were  in  things,  as  it  were 
the  ordering  and  unifying  spirit  of  the  whole.  Nominalism, 
on  the  other  hand,  made  universals  mere  names,  abstractions 
formed  by  thought  for  its  own  convenience.  These  terms, 
then,  implied  the  questions  fundamental  to  all  thought,  which 
according  as  they  are  conceived,  stated,  and  answered,  dififer- 
^ “ De  Fid.  Trin.f’  c.  ii.,  Opera,  p.  42. 


BUT  NOMINALISM  CRITICAL. 


125 


entiate  all  schools  of  philosophy.  Scholastic  Realism  is  akin 
to  our  transcendental  Idealism.  It  assumed  the  priority  of 
thought,  reasoned  downwards  from  the  universal  to  the  par- 
ticular, and  explained  all  phenomena  of  sense  by  the  action 
of  the  spirit  or  idea  which  alone  was  real  and  rational.  Of 
its  two  forms  the  one  was  more  speculative,  the  other  more 
practical  or  experimental, — the  speculative  deducing  what  is 
from  the  realia,  i.e.^  the  ideas  ; the  experimental  using  the 
ideas  to  explain  the  realities.  Duns  Scotus,  because  the  more 
purely  speculative  or  a priori^  was  more  of  a rationalist  than 
Aquinas  ; Aquinas,  because  more  experimental,  i.e.y  standing 
more  on  his  own  experience  and  the  Church’s,  was  more  of 
a supernaturalist,  one  who  used  his  speculation  to  justify  his 
experience.  To  Duns  the  rational  was  the  real,  but  to 
Aquinas  the  real  was  the  rational.  Nominalism,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  like  our  empiricism.  It  started  from  the  priority  of 
sense,  reasoned  from  below  upwards ; held  that  mind  in  ac- 
quiring knowledge  proceeded  from  particulars  to  universals, 
which,  as  simple  generalizations  from  a multitude  of  in- 
dividuals, were  mere  names. 

The  two  schools  acted  in  the  region  of  theology  in  accord- 
ance with  their  respective  principles  Realism  was  more 
constructive  and  conservative.  Nominalism  more  critical  and 
disintegrative  ; and  was  always  most  so  when  its  criticism 
was  skilfully  masked  under  deference  to  authority.  The 
system  that  does  not  start  with  a constructive  reason 
cannot  rationally  or  logically  translate  religious  beliefs  into 
the  terms  of  the  reason.  What  it  does  not  find  within 
and  has  to  construe  as  simply  given  from  without,  it  can 
only  regard  as  a thing  more  or  less  arbitrary  because  more 
or  less  external.  On  the  ground  of  reason  it  cannot  find 
the  most  transcendental  of  all  ideas  reasonable  ; and 
hence,  if  it  accepts  them,  must  accept  them  on  the  word 
of  an  authority  which  it  has  somehow  been  persuaded  to 
regard  as  sufficient.  This  was  the  position  of  the  later 


126 


SCHOLASTICISM  PHILOSOPHICAL. 


and  more  scientific  Nominalism,  especially  of  Occam.  He 
was  more  conscious  of  the  difficulties  than  the  faculties 
of  belief,  and  his  ultimate  reason  for  it  was  an  appeal  to 
an  authority  whose  words  could  be  more  easily  quoted 
than  its  right  or  reason  justified.  Hence  Nominalism  was 
a sign  that  Scholasticism,  and  with  it  mediaeval  Catholicism, 
had  begun  to  decay ; the  hour  had  come  when  the  materials 
it  had  so  audaciously  built  into  system  could  be  assailed  by 
a criticism  which  was  most  disintegrative  when  it  seemed 
most  conservative. 

Scholasticism,  then,  in  its  essential  character  was  a philo- 
sophy, determined  by  the  philosophies  which  had  been  before 
it.  The  world  it  attempted  to  interpret  was  composed  of 
the  Church  and  such  remains  of  the  ancient  order  as  it  had 
been  able  to  incorporate  ; the  method  it  pursued  was  one  it 
learned  from  Aristotle.  The  limitations  that  mark  it  belong 
to  its  world  on  the  one  hand,  and  its  method  on  the  other, 
but  it  is  only  when  construed  as  a sort  of  belated  ancient 
philosophy  that  it  can  be  construed  at  all.  This  philosophy 
came  to  it  as  a logic  or  dialectic  rather  than  a metaphysic, 
affecting  the  substance  through  the  forms  of  thought,  by 
teaching  it  the  art  of  definition  and  distinction,  of  statement 
and  argument.  It  was  exactly  the  sort  of  philosophy  the 
age  needed  to  construe  the  material  offered  to  it,  the  Church 
and  its  tradition  receiving  at  its  hands  a sort  of  intellectual 
apotheosis.  But  just  as  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  the  constructive 
endeavour  was  reached  by  the  schools  of  absolute  and  of 
modified  Realism,  or  the  Scotists  and  the  Thomists,  a subtle 
and  sceptical  Nominalism,  fatal  to  the  assumptions  of  both, 
came  out  of  the  North,  showing  thought  critical  where  once 
it  had  been  only  constructive.  And  coincident  with  this 
appeared  other  causes  which  were  to  work  even  more 
efficiently  for  the  birth  of  new  than  for  the  death  of  the 
old  theologies. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


THE  RENAISSANCE  AND  THE  REFORMATION 

§ L — The  Time  and  the  Men. 

F the  causes  external  to  Scholasticism  which  con- 


tributed to  the  decay  of  the  mediaeval  system,  the 


most  potent,  and  for  us  by  far  the  most  significant,  was  the 
Renaissance.  It  was  made  possible  by  the  then  state  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  and  actual  by  the  recovery  of  the 
ancient  literatures  ; the  one  may  be  described  as  the  con- 
dition, the  other  as  the  cause  of  its  being.  It  found  the 
Mediaeval  Papacy  in  a state  of  decay,  and  it  hastened 
the  decay  into  a dissolution.  If  Christianity  assimilated 
while  it  dissolved  the  Greco-Roman  world,  the  resurgence 
of  that  world  dissolved  the  Papacy,  whose  energies  had 
been  exhausted  in  the  creation  of  modern  Europe.  By  the 
middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  it  was  manifest  that  the 
old  system  had  in  every  point — thought,  polity,  religion — 
broken  down.  Just  as  the ' intellect  had  ceased  to  be  con- 
structive in  theology,  the  Church  had  ceased  to  be  creative  in 
religion,  or  adequate  to  the  realization  of  even  its  mediaeval 
ideal.  In  politics  the  Papal  system  had  lost  its  ancient  im- 
perialism, had  forgotten  the  high  ideals  that  governed  it, 
and  had  degenerated  into  a cunning  statecraft,  meddling, 
selfish,  vicious.  The  Popes  had  allowed  themselves  to  be 
swept  into  the  whirlpool  of  Italian  intrigue,  and,  greedy 
of  power,  of  patronage,  and,  still  more,  of  money,  fought, 


128 


THE  CLASSICAL  WORLD  AWAKES 


schemed,  bribed,  betrayed,  broke  or  kept  faith,  on  the  purest 
Machiavellian  principles,  and  for  strictly  consonant  ends. 
The  acutest  political  and  most  typical  Italian  mind  of  the 
century  calls  Italy  la  corruttela  ed  il  vituperio  del  mondo,  and 
so  connects  its  moral  debasement  with  the  Church  as  to  show 
that  patriotism  could  hardly  bear  other  fruit  than  the  ecclesias- 
tical revolt.  But  even  more  utter  was  the  religious  decadence. 
There  is  no  need  to  invent  scandal  : the  literature  of  the 
period  is  the  most  scandalous  in  history,  that  which  concerns 
the  Papacy  the  most  scandalous  of  all.  The  vow  of  celibacy 
was  not  construed  as  a vow  of  chastity,  and  the  obscurest 
offender  could  plead  in  apology  the  example  of  illustrious 
princes  and  heads  of  the  Church.  Impure  Popes  signified 
impure  courts,  cardinals  and  conclaves  that  made  light  of  sin. 
The  dreadful  thing  about  Innocent  VIII.  or  Alexander  VI. 
was  not  his  personal  character,  but  his  election  by  men 
who  knew  his  personal  character  only  too  well.  The  whole 
system  was  moribund,  and  a decaying  body  politic  is  never 
a wholesome  body,  least  of  all  in  the  head. 

This  century,  then,  of  decaying  mediaevalism  was  the  century 
of  the  Renaissance.  Men  who  lived  under  a once  proud  and 
noble  Church  system,  now  fallen  into  impotence  and  unreality, 
found  themselves  face  to  face  with  an  ancient  literature,  and, 
through  it,  with  an  older  world.  Comparison  became  not 
only  possible,  but  necessary ; through  the  medium  of  the 
older  the  newer  world  came  to  know  and  to  criticize  itself 
The  ancient  literature  was  finer,  the  ancient  world  fresher, 
than  anything  the  moderns  knew.  Man  had  changed  since 
the  literature  had  been  lost  to  him  ; and  the  change  made 
it  at  its  rebirth  the  more  vivid  and  him  the  m.ore  ready  to 
learn  its  lesson.  The  old  world  knew  no  Church  and  had 
no  sense  of  sin  ; the  new  world  had  been  fashioned  by  the 
Church  and  was  possessed  with  the  sense  of  sin,  though  the 
Church  had  fallen  into  feebleness,  and  sin  lived  more  in 
symbol  than  in  sense  or  conscience.  Each  world  had  thus 


AND  FINDS  A CHANGED  CHRISTIANITY. 


129 


its  naturalism,  but  with  a difference  : the  nature  of  the  old 
world  was  innocent,  and  so  its  naturalism  was  open  and 
unashamed  ; the  nature  of  the  new  world  was  sinful,  and 
so  its  naturalism  was  furtive,  guilty,  debased.  And  this 
radical  difference  made  minds  conscious  of  many  sharp, 
unreconciled,  even  irreconcilable  antitheses.  The  recovered 
literature  created  a sense  of  style,  and  the  elegant  Latinity 
of  Poliziano  made  scholastic  Latin,  and  all  that  had  been 
written  therein,  seem  barbarous.  With  the  sense  for  style 
the  faculty  of  criticism  awoke,  and  Lorenzo  Valla  was  able 
to  prove  the  donation  of  Constantine  a forgery,  the  tradition 
as  to  the  origin  of  the  Apostolic  symbol  a fable,  the  language 
of  the  Vulgate  faulty  and  inaccurate.  The  study  of  ancient 
philosophy  proved  more  educative  and  ennobling  than  the 
study  of  mediaeval  theology.  Aristotle,  in  the  hands  of 
Pomponazzi,  took  a subtler  and  broader  meaning  than  he 
had  had  in  the  schools  ; the  heroes  and  sages  of  antiquity 
were  drawn  into  the  circle  of  the  saints — baptized,  as  it 
were,  into  current  ecclesiastical  ideas  and  usages ; Socrates 
became  a type  of  Christ,  Plato  the  Attic  Moses  ; before  his 
bust,  laurel-crowned,  Marsilio  Ficino  kept  a lamp  burning, 
cultivating  piety  at  the  shrine  of  the  man  he  taught  to  speak 
Latin.  Pico  della  Mirandula,  loving  the  old,  yet  loyal  to 
the  new,  strove  to  reconcile  the  two,  sought  the  aid  of  the 
Kabbala,  and,  by  the  help  of  cunning  allegory,  made  doetrine 
and  history  and  philosophy  speak  the  language  he  wished. 
But  an  ecleetic  mysticism,  though  devout  and  sufficient  for 
the  individual,  is  never  final  or  scientific,  or  sufficient  for 
the  time.  The  old  recovered  world  could  not  thus  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  new  world  on  which  it  had  broken.  There 
were  falsities  in  both,  and  also  veracities  in  both,  and  the 
veracity  in  each  was  to  be  fatal  to  the  falsity  in  the  other.  The 
moribund  body  ecclesiastic  was  sensitive  all  over  to  the  touch 
of  the  new  historical  spirit;  nascent  criticism  showed  that 
some  of  the  Church’s  proudest  claims  were  based  in  fraud  ; 

9 


130  ITALIAN  AND  TEUTONIC  HUMANISM. 

the  lofty  spirit  of  Plato,  now  unsphered,  rebuked  its  empty, 
dogmatic  formulae  ; and  a passionate  patriot  and  preacher 
of  righteousness  at  P'lorence  stood  forward  sternly  to  de- 
nounce its  sins  against  the  liberties  of  man  and  the  laws  of 
God.  The  times  were  ripe,  but  the  Italy  that  the  Papacy 
had  so  helped  to  debase  could  not  embody  the  new  thought 
in  victorious  action.  The  spirit  of  Machiavelli  guided  the 
policies  of  Italy  ; and  out  of  the  mean,  ambitious,  and  selfish 
intrigues  of  princes,  uprising  and  restoration,  in  any  large 
sense,  political  or  religious,  can  never  come. 

But  along  with  the  classical  the  ancient  Christian  litera- 
ture and  world  were  recovered,  and  became  objects  of  his- 
torical study  and  knowledge.  And  in  relation  to  these  two 
worlds  and  literatures  the  characteristic  differences  between 
North  and  South  were  again  repeated.  The  transalpine 
was  exceedingly  unlike  the  cisalpine  Humanism.  The 
Teutonic,  as  we  may  call  it,  was  notable  for  its  intense 
ethical  seriousness,  the  religiousness,  the  Christian  temper 
and  aims  of  its  representative  men ; but  the  Italian  for 
its  unethical  character,  its  spirit  of  revolt  against  religion, 
its  recoil  towards  classical  forms  of  philosophical  belief. 
Epicurean,  Peripatetic,  Platonic,  culminating  in  systems  like 
the  Pantheism  of  Bruno  and  the  Atheism  of  Vanini.  Primi- 
tive Christianity  was,  indeed,  not  so  intelligible  to  Italian  as 
to  German  men.  For  one  thing,  it  came  in  a literature  that 
offended  classical  taste,  that  had  none  of  the  grand  style 
which  the  men  of  the  Renaissance  loved,  and  they  feared 
that  too  much  study  of  it  might  injure  the  elegance  of  their 
Latinity.  And  so  it  was  a literature  that  the  great  Italian 
scholars  did  not  care  to  edit,  or  great  houses  to  publish.  The 
famous  presses  of  Italy  sent  forth  editions  of  the  Greek  and 
Latin  classics,  but  not  one  oi  the  Greek  New  Testament  ; intel- 
lectual centres  like  Florence  affected  the  Platonic  academy 
rather  than  the  Christian  school.  For  another  thing,  Italy 
could  construe  Christianity  better  as  a political  than  as  an 


RENAISSANCE  IN  LITERATURE  AND  RELIGION.  I3I 

intellectual  system  ; the  men  who  knew  it  only  as  New  Rome 
did  not  care  to  know  it  as  it  had  been  before  it  was  Roman  ; 
its  roots  in  the  Eternal  City  were  more  intelligible  to  them 
than  its  roots  in  the  paternity  of  God  and  the  sin  of  man. 
But  in  the  transalpine  countries  it  was  altogether  different  ; 
there  classical  antiquity  had  immeasurably  less  significance 
and  ancient  Christianity  immeasurably  more.  The  two 
Humanisms,  then,  may  be  distinguished  thus  : the  Teutonic 
Humanism  studied  classical  that  it  might  the  better  know 
Christian  antiquity,  but  the  Italian  studied  the  literature  that 
it  might  the  better  imitate  the  life  of  the  ancient  classical 
peoples.  Hence  Italy  had  scholars  and  painters,  but  the 
Teutonic  countries  scholars  and  reformers.  Reuchlin,  though 
no  official  theologian,  was  a Humanist,  that  he  might  be 
a better  divine.  He  studied  language  that  he  might  be 
qualified  to  interpret  religion.  Colet,  the  most  typical  Eng- 
lish Humanist,  studied  Greek  that  he  might  the  better 
know  and  teach  St.  Paul.  Erasmus,  the  purest  embodi- 
ment of  Teutonic  Humanism,  was  editor  of  the  first  Greek 
New  Testament  published,  paraphrased  it,  annotated  it,  and 
worked  throughout  his  long  and  laborious  life  mainly  on 
early  Christian  literature.  The  Teutonic  mind  made  the 
literature  more  of  a means,  but  the  Italian  made  it  more  of 
an  end, — where  it  was  more  of  an  end,  the  characteristic 
result  was  the  new  birth  of  art ; where  more  of  a means,  the 
result,  no  less  characteristic,  was  the  new  birth  of  religion. 

§ II. — The  Renaissance  in  Christian  Literature  : 

Erasmus. 

The  recovered  knowledge  of  Christian  antiquity  could 
thus,  as  little  as  the  recovered  knowledge  of  classical,  remain 
without  result.  Where  men  profoundly  believed  their  religion, 
they  could  not  discover  anew  its  sources  without  being  pro- 
foundly moved  by  the  discovery.  To  come  suddenly  face 


132  ANCIENT  CHRISTIANITY  DISCOVERED 

to  face  with  the  personalities  and  ideas  creative  of  the 
Christian  faith  as  they  lived  in  the  marvellous  literature  of 
the  period  of  creation,  was  like  being  translated  into  a new 
and  strange  world.  For  while  the  Christianity  the  Church 
had  made  was  known,  the  Christianity  that  had  made  the 
Church  was  not.  And  so  long  as  the  Church,  simply  as 
Church,  was  known,  man  did  not  feel  the  need  of  getting 
behind  and  beneath  it  to  its  Maker,  did  not  conceive  the 
necessity  or  even  the  possibility  of  comparing  it  with  His 
mind  and  purpose.  But  when  they  found  themselves  in  pos- 
session of  the  original  literature,  and  were  able  to  deal  with 
it  as  literature,  yet  as  the  sacred  and  authoritative  source  of 
the  Church  and  her  faith,  comparison  of  the  parent  form  and 
the  living  organism  became  inevitable  ; and,  of  course,  could 
not  but  involve  judgment  as  to  the  degree  in  which  the 
organism  had  departed  from  the  primitive  type. 

The  inevitable  though  altogether  undesigned  result  of  this 
return  to  the  sources  of  the  religion  was  therefore  the  rise  of 
such  questions  as — Flow  did  the  Church  and  Churchmen  of 
to-day  compare  with  Christ  and  His  Apostles  and  Apostolic 
Christianity  ? Whether  was  the  difference  to  the  advantage 
or  disadvantage  of  religion?  Whether  ought  the  established 
order  to  be  accommodated  to  the  primitive  law,  or  the  primi- 
tive law  to  be  superseded  and  supplemented  by  the  esta- 
blished order  ? We  may  see  the  answer  of  Humanism,  more  or 
less  again  undesigned,  in  Erasmus,  who  was,  like  Reuchlin, 
no  Protestant,  and,  like  him,  lived  and  died  a Catholic.  It  is 
no  reflection  on  him  to  say  that  his  primary  interest  was 
literature,  his  secondary  religion.  That  is  but  to  say  that 
he  was  a Humanist,  not  a reformer.  To  the  work  of  a 
reformer  "ho  man  was  ever  by  nature  less  destined,  and  no 
man  was  ever  more  obedient  to  the  nature  he  had.  He 
loved  peace,  culture,  good  society  ; he  was  delicate,  fastidious, 
sensitive,  “ so  thin-skinned  that  a fly  would  draw  blood,”  as 
was  most  truly  said  of  him  ; he  hated  the  obtuse,  the  ignorant. 


AND  COMPARED  WITH  MODERN:  ERASMUS.  1 33 

the  vulgar,  the  men  who  could  not  see  or  feel  the  sarcasm 
within  its  veil  of  compliment,  or  the  irony  hidden  in  a 
graceful  allusion  or  ambiguous  phrase.  He  feared  revolution, 
with  its  sudden  release  of  incalculable  forces,  the  chaos,  the 
collisions,  the  brutalities  it  was  certain  to  evoke.  The  pos- 
sible evils  incident  to  radical  change  more  alarmed  his 
imagination  than  the  evils  actual  in  the  existing  order  touched 
his  conscience.  He  loved  his  esoteric  world,  desired  nothing 
better  than  to  be  left  in  possession  of  it,  free  to  criticize  from 
its  point  of  view  the  world  exoteric,  yet,  with  due  regard  to 
the  benefits  of  studious  peace,  always  preferring  to  insinuate 
rather  than  express  an  opinion,  to  pronounce  a conditional 
rather  than  an  absolute  judgment,^  But  in  spite  of  the  nature 
that  bound  him  to  the  old  order,  and  so  held  him  a Catholic, 
no  man  did  more  for  reform,  or  formulated  principles  that 
more  demanded  it.  His  New  Testament  was  here  his 
greatest  achievement.  Some  of  the  great  presses  had  indeed 
first  and  chiefly  busied  themselves  with  editions  of  the  Vul- 
gate, which,  as  the  Church’s  version  of  the  Bible,  stood  under 
its  sanction,  raised  no  question  of  translation,  of  criticism,  of 
relation  to  prior  and  creative  sources,  but  was  rather,  as  it 
were,  its  authorized  and  printed  tradition.  But  with  Erasmus’ 
New  Testament  it  was  altogether  different.  Here  stood  the 
Book  in  its  original  speech,  with  attempts  to  fix  certain 
dubious  readings,  with  one  most  significant  text  omitted, 
with  a new  version  alongside  it  said  to  be  more  elegant 
and  accurate  than  the  old : how  did  the  sanctioned  and 
authoritative  version  translate  this  original  ? and  could  the 

^ No  man  ever  more  frankly  enthroned  authority,  or  professed  the  spirit 
of  submission.  At  the  bidding  of  the  Church  he  was  ready  to  condemn 
his  own  critical  conclusions  (Opera  ix.,  p.  864,  B.),  and  he  could,  he  said, 
have  agreed  with  the  Arians  and  Pelagians,  if  the  Church  had  sanctioned 
their  doctrine.  See  letter  to  Wilibald  Pirkheimer,  “ Epistolae,”  p.  1029 
(Leyden  ed.).  We  know  what  confessions  of  this  kind  would  mean  in  the 
mouth  of  a cynic — no  two  things  may  be  nearer  allied  than  submission  to 
authority  and  indifference  to  truth.  He  would  be  a brave  man  who  would 
say  what  they  mean  in  the  mouth  of  Erasmus. 


134  CATHOLICISM  AND  THE  PRIMITIVE  ORGANISM 


translations  beside  the  original  be  authoritative  any  more? 
Here,  too,  was  the  Head  and  Founder  of  the  Church,  the 
Church  He  founded,  the  men  through  whom  He  did  it, 
all  presented  in  the  lucid  pages  of  authentic  and  con- 
temporary history  : did  the  Catholic  truly  represent  the 
Apostolic  Church,  embody  its  spirit,  interpret  its  doctrines, 
maintain  its  laws  and  institutions  ? What  of  Rome,  and 
the  Papacy,  and  the  priesthood,  and  the  whole  sacerdotal 
organization  was  there  in  the  Christianity  of  Christ  and 
His  Apostles? 

These  questions  were  inevitable,  and  the  answers  as  clear 
and  emphatic  as  they  could  be  made  by  a man  of  Erasmus’ 
temper  and  habits  and  tastes.  Christ  was  the  one  Teacher 
appointed  of  God  Himself ; supreme  authority  belongs  to 
Him  alone.^  He  marvels  that  men  should  have  made  Christ’s 
words  to  Peter  bear  exclusive  reference  to  the  Pope  ; they 
refer  indeed  to  him,  but  to  all  Christians  as  welH  By 
Church  he  does  not  understand  priests,  bishops,  or  popes, 
who  are  merely  its  ministers,  but  the  whole  Christian  people 
or  collective  community  ^ — that  is,  “ A certain  congregation 
of  all  men  throughout  the  whole  world,  who  agree  in  the 
faith  of  the  Gospel,  who  worship  one  God  the  Father,  who 
place  their  whole  confidence  in  his  Son,  who  are  led  by  the 
same  Spirit  of  Him,  from  whose  fellowship  every  one  who 
commits  deadly  sin  is  cut  off.”  ^ As  to  the  Sacraments,  were 

^ “ Annotationes  in  Nov.  Test.,”  sub  loc.,  Matt.  xvii.  5. 

2 Ibid.,  Matt.  xvi.  18.  It  may  be  noted  that  Stunica  laid  special 
emphasis  on  Erasmus’  attitude  to  the  primacy  of  Peter  and  the  Papal 
Chair.  The  charges  were;  (i)  Erasmus  has  affirmed  that  it  cannot  be 
argued  from  Peter  standing  first  in  the  Apostolic  catalogue  in  Matthew 
that  he  was  the  first  of  the  Apostles.  (2)  He  denies  that  the  words, 
“ Thou  art  Peter,”  etc.,  etc.,  refer  to  Peter  alone.  (3)  He  maintains  that  the  Pope’s 
title  in  earliest  times  was  “ Pontifex  Romanus,”  not  “Summus  Pontifex.” 
(4)  He  holds  the  monarchy  of  the  Pope  to  be  later  than  Jerome  ; the 
authority  now  ascribed  to  the  Roman  See  was  unknown  even  to  Augustine. 
— “Apologia  ad  L.  Stunicam,”  opera  ix.,  p.  381. 

3 “Epist.,”  1029,  A.;  “ Adagiorum  Chiliades,”  p.  589  (Basel  ed.). 

^ “Colloquia”:  “ Inquisitio  de  Fide,”  298  (Amsterdam  ed.). 


COMPARED  AND  CONTRASTED. 


135 


it  not  that  the  judgment  of  the  Church  was  adverse,  he 
would  incline  to  the  reformed  doctrine  ; even  as  it  is,  he 
does  not  see  any  good  in  a body  imperceptible  to  the  senses, 
or  any  use  in  it,  provided  only  spiritual  grace  be  present  in 
the  symbols.^  Besides,  no  one  but  the  priest  can  know  that 
the  Host  has  been  properly  consecrated,  and  Erasmus  can 
find  no  place  in  the  sacred  Scriptures  which  certainly  proves 
that  the  Apostles  consecrated  bread  and  wine  into  the  body 
and  blood  of  the  Lord.^  The  elements  are  but  symbols 
th^-t  signify  the  indissoluble  unity  of  Christ,  the  Head,  and 
His  mystical  body,  the  Church.  Indeed,  the  sacerdotal 
tendencies  and  practices  of  the  time,  with  their  inexorable 
and  demoralizing  fetishism,  had  no  more  unsparing  critic  than 
Erasmus,  and  his  criticism  proceeded  from  principles  that 
were  fatal  to  all  the  penances,  claims,  and  ordinances  of 
Catholicism.  Relic-worship  invariably  provoked  his  severest 
and  most  pungent  satire,  and  even  moved  him  to  gravest 
censure  as  a new  and  meaner  Pharisaism,  which  became,  even 
mor«  than  the  old,  the  hideous  caricature  of  godliness.^  To 
escape  from  it  men  must  return  to  the  Gospel.  The  rule  is, 
men  go  to  Rome  to  come  back  worse ; what  best  ensures 
amendment  of  life  is  the  Word  of  Truth.^  Neglect  of 
the  Gospel  has  caused  a double  evil  to  come  upon  the 
Church,  more  than  heathenism  of  life  and  a ceremonial 
Judaism  in  worship.  In  the  ceremonies  the  whole  Papal 
system  was  for  the  mind  and  conscience  of  the  day  sum- 
marized ; it  was  here  that  it  most  directly  touched  life, 
subverted  morals,  debased  worship,  estranged  man  from  God. 

^ “ Epist.,”  941,  A. 

^ Ibid.^  1193.  D-  E.  Of  course  this  represents  the  view  of  the  familiar 
epistles — Erasmus’  private,  confidential  opinion,  what  would  have  been 
most  agreeable  to  his  reason.  His  public  view,  accepted  because  of  the 
judgment  of  the  Church,  may  be  found  in  the  letters  to  Conrad  Pelican 
ibid.^  963-966,  and  his  “ Detectio  Praestigiarum  Cujusdam  Libelli,”  oc- 
casioned by  an  anonymous  German  work  on  this  subject. 

® “ Annotationes  in  Nov.  Test.,”  sub  loc.^  Matt,  xxiii.  5. 

■*  “Colloquia  ” ; “ Adolescens  et  Scortum,”  p.  251. 


36 


NEED  OF  THE  PURITAN. 


So  Erasmus  assailed  the  ceremonies  from  every  point  of  view. 
They  were  unscriptural  : in  the  whole  New  Testament 

there  is  no  command  which  refers  to  ceremonies  ; against 
them  are  warnings  enough  by  Christ,  arguments  enough  by 
Paul,  but  nowhere  from  any  one  any  word  of  commendation.^ 
They  were  irreligious  too ; where  they  flourished,  piety, 

morality,  common  decency  even,  decayed.  And  the  reason 
was  not  far  to  seek.  Positive  laws,  made  by  bishops  or 
councils,  popes  or  orders,  could  not  supersede  or  set  aside 
the  laws  of  nature  or  of  God.  These  had  the  prior  and 
higher  authority,  but  they  were  ever  being  invalidated  or 
repealed  by  the  ceremonies.  If  a priest  lets  his  hair  grow 
or  wears  a lay  habit  he  is  punished,  but  if  he  debauches 
himself  and  others  “he  is  still  a pillar  of  the  Church.” 

Men  who  would  die  rather  than  eat  flesh  when  forbidden, 
yet  did  not  scruple  to  live  lasciviously.  In  language  of 

appalling  plainness  he  described  the  obfuscation  of  con- 
science by  the  ceremonies ; they  abrogated  the  law  of  God, 
caused  disrespect  and  disobedience  to  the  most  rudimentary, 
yet  imperative,  moral  laws,  blinded  and  blunted  the  moral 
sense,  created  an  artificial  and  utterly  unveracious  conscience 
in  persons,  orders,  and  even  whole  communities.^  No  man 
had  ever  less  of  the  Puritan  temper  than  Erasmus  ; but  no 
man  so  helps  us  to  understand  the  need  for  the  Puritan 
spirit  and  character.  Sacerdotal  ceremonialism  had  done  in 
Christianity  what  it  has  done  in  every  religion  it  has  ever  got 
control  of — what,  Erasmus  again  and  again  argued,  it  had  done 
with  most  tragic  results  in  Judaism:  ended  the  reign  of  the 
moral  ideal,  subordinated  the  Divine  categorical  imperative  to 
some  trivial  positive  ordinance,  to  the  ritual  or  routine  of  the 
caste  or  the  cloister  or  the  school.  Humanism,  in  the  light 
of  the  literature  it  loved,  saw  the  evil,  and  in  its  elegant, 

^ “ Ratio  Verae  Theolog.,”  p.  94  ; “ Enchiridion,”  pp.  60  ft. 

2 “ Colloquia  : 'ix^dvocfiayia”  This  colloquy  presents  a full  and  most  vivid 
view  of  Erasmus’  position. 


THE  PURITAN  APPEARS. 


137 


incisive,  satirical,  yet  humorous  way  criticized  what  it  saw  ; 
but  criticism,  while  it  may  entertain  and  even  amend  life, 
neither  can  nor  will  do  what  was  then  most  in  need  of  being 
done — reform  religion. 

§ III. — The  Reformation  : Luther. 

But  the  new  reading  of  history  involved  a new  effort  not 
only  at  the  interpretation,  but  also  at  the  realization  of  the 
religion.  Hence  out  of  Humanism  Protestantism  soon  came. 
Both  were  creations  of  the  historical  spirit — the  one  in  the 
sphere  of  literature,  the  other  in  the  realm  of  religion.  The 
recovered  literature  of  classical  and  Christian  antiquity  alike 
acted  on  the  imagination,  but  with  a characteristic  difference : 
in  the  one  case,  the  imagination  was  reached  through  the 
reason,  in  the  other  the  reason  was  reached  through  the 
imagination  and  conscience.  The  result  in  the  former  case 
was  culture,  the  exercise  and  enjoyment  of  balanced  and 
regulated  faculty  ; the  result  in  the  latter  case  was  religion, 
the  genesis  of  new  beliefs  as  to  God  and  man,  and  the 
impulse  to  embody  them  in  action — i.e.^  in  the  creation  of 
a new  world  correspondent  to  the  new  faith.  The  historical 
spirit  in  the  sphere  of  literature  is  objective,  handles  its 
material  as  facts  or  phenomena  that  have  to  be  understood 
and  criticized,  construed  and  explained  ; but  the  historical 
spirit  in  the  realm  of  religion  is  subjective,  handles  its 
material  as  transcendental  and  eternal  realities  related  to 
an  immortal  subject,  as  symbols  or  revelations  of  the  cause 
and  end  of  being,  and  of  the  law  by  which  life  ought  to  be 
ordered.  Now,  the  access  to  the  original  sources  meant  to  the 
quickened  conscience  and  imagination  a sudden  coming  face 
to  face  with  the  Christ,  who  was  at  once  the  maker  of  the 
Christian  religion  and  the  Saviour  of  the  soul.  The  more 
earnest  the  man  who  stood  there,  the  more  inevitable  would 
be  the  question — Is  the  Church’s  way  Christ’s?  Does  it 


138  LUTHER  THE  CONSERVATIVE  BY  NATURE 

truly  represent  Him  and  realize  His  religion?  This  was 
Luther’s  question,  but  not  his  only — it  was  the  question  of 
the  time  ; yet  to  understand  the  form  in  which  it  was  raised 
we  must  understand  him.  He  was  no  Humanist,  in  the  strict 
sense,  though  Humanism  had  contributed  to  his  making. 
Some  of  its  brightest  sons  were  amongst  his  oldest  and  truest 
friends  ; but  he  himself  had  none  of  the  fastidiousness,  the 
dubious  temper,  the  love  of  elegance,  the  refining,  though  not 
necessarily  refined,  spirit,  which  makes  the  study  of  literature 
a culture  and  an  end  in  itself  He  was  a stalwart  man, 
sensuous,  passionate,  imaginative,  tender,  easily  moved  to 
laughter  or  to  tears,  capable  of  the  strongest  love  or  hate 
possessed  of  the  simpler  emotions,  a stranger  to  the  more 
complex,  indifferent  to  the  abstract,  open  to  the  concrete. 
Good  had  for  him  no  being  without  God,  and  evil  none 
without  the  devil.  He  was  never  meant  by  nature  for 
an  intellectual  innovator ; his  changes  were  never  due  to 
any  speculative  process  or  logical  concatenation  of  thought, 
though  in  decisive  moments  he  was  often  guided  by  a 
supreme,  yet  courageous,  common  sense.  Like  all  men  of 
strong  and  simple  emotions,  his  instincts  were  all  conserva- 
tive ; he  hated  change,  changed  only  under  the  compulsion 
of  an  over-mastering  feeling  or  need,  and  with  a sort  of 
convulsion  of  nature,  conservative  changes  taking  always 
more  or  less  the  form  of  a catastrophe.  Hence  the  large 
dramatic  element  in  Luther’s  life ; he  resisted  change  till 
resistance  became  impossible,  and  then  he  changed  with  a 
noise  that  startled  Europe.  So  was  it  with  the  publication 
of  his  Theses,  his  burning  of  the  Pope’s  Bull,  his  appearance 
at  Worms,  and  his  marriage.  Hence,  too,  the  inconsistencies 
of  Lutheranism  ; it  has  no  logical  coherence,  is  explicable 
when  studied  through  Luther’s  history  and  experience,  but 
inexplicable  if  regarded  as  a reasoned  and  articulated  system. 
In  dealing  with  justification  by  faith  his  mode  of  handling 
Scripture  was  the  freest ; in  dealing  with  the  Supper  his 


BECOMES  THE  REFORMER  BY  NECESSITY. 


39 


method  was  a slavish  literalism.  And  the  case  is  typical : in 
him  lay  two  opposite  worlds  ; he  was  a revolutionary  without 
being  a radical,  or,  as  it  were,  ai  Protestant  under  protest, 
which  means  that  the  work  he  did  grew  out  of  the  conflict 
between  character  and  position,  but  was  not  the  spontaneous 
outcome  of  an  innovating  and  reconstructive  mind. 

Now,  this  was  precisely  the  sort  of  man  needed  to  change 
the  literary  or  Humanistic  into  a religious  and  reforming 
movement.  It  could  not  have  been  done  by  a designing  man, 
or  a cloistered  student,  or  a malcontent,  or  a doctrinaire 
radical ; it  could  only  have  been  done  by  a man  compact  of 
passion  and  imagination, — of  a passion  that,  when  roused, 
could  move  with  irresistible  force,  blind  to  the  obstructions 
in  its  path  ; of  an  imagination  that,  when  quickened,  could 
see  further  than  the  colder  reason,  and  also  compel  others  to 
see.  We  are  to  imagine  a man  so  constituted  possessed  of 
what  is  perhaps  the  most  awful  and  imperious  creation  of 
Christianity,  the  sense  of  sin  ; and  with  this  sense  in  kind  and 
quality  and  degree  as  it  had  been  in  Paul  and  in  Augustine, 
and  as  it  was  to  be  later  in  Bunyan.  Such  a sense  is  at  root  a 
passion  for  the  possession  of  Deity  by  a man  who  feels  Deity 
too  awful  in  His  goodness  to  be  possessed  by  him.  It 
does  not  argue  a bad  man,  but  it  argues  a man  who  knows 
the  impossibility  of  being  worthy  of  God,  yet  feels  the 
necessity  to  him  of  the  God  who  seems  so  unapproachable, 
so  inaccessible.  To  such  a man,  reconciliation,  to  be  real, 
must  be  of  God  and  to  God,  a work  of  infinite  grace  ; 
and  religion  to  be  true  must  be  the  way  or  method  of  such 
reconciliation.  The  Christian  doctrine  of  sin  would  be  in- 
tolerable were  it  not  transfigured  by  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  grace ; indeed,  it  is  the  splendour  of  the  one  that  makes 
the  shadow  lie  so  dark  upon  the  other.  Sin  without  grace  is 
the  creed  of  cynicism  or  despair  ; it  is  only  through  grace 
that  it  becomes  an  integral  part  of  Christianity. 

Such  a man  was  Luther,  and  to  him  the  New  Testament 


140  ANTITHESES  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  REPEATED. 

comes,  not  as  the  voice  of  the  Church,  but  as  God’s  voice.  The 
first  Christian  age  rises  before  him,  wakes  into  life,  stands 
out  in  vivid  contrast  to  his  own.  Here  are  no  indulgences, 
penances,  pilgrimages  ; all  is  simple,  of  grace,  through  faith, 
without  works.  He  feels  affinity  with  Paul  ; new  Catholicism 
is  but  old  Judaism,  with  its  fathers,  traditions,  law,  ceremonial, 
righteousness  after  the  flesh  ; and  the  new  must  be  com- 
bated by  the  weapons  that  had  vanquished  the  old.  He 
stands  in  the  immediate  presence  of  Christ,  and  learns  that 
His  conflict  with  the  Pharisees  has  the  same  reason  and 
meaning  as  Paul’s  with  Judaism.  In  the  light  of  the  New 
Testament  duty  becomes  clear  : there  must  be  a return  to 
Apostolical  Christianity.  For  Luther  this  return  was  summed 
up  in  the  idea  of  Redemption  by  the  free  grace  of  God  in 
Christ,  justification  by  faith,  without  any  work  or  contribu- 
tory merit  on  the  part  of  man  ; and  by  this  idea  he  measured 
the  Church.  What  he  saw  before  him  was  an  immense 
system  of  salvation  by  works,  the  works  mere  ceremonial, 
not  ethical,  with  a merit  that  came  of  obedience  to  positive 
or  ecclesiastical,  not  to  absolute  or  Divine  law.  But  such 
merit  as  purely  external  is  a transferable,  even  purchasable 
thing ; while  he  conceived  that  what  ought  to  be  was  a 
salvation  altogether  of  God,  which  allowed  no  place  and  no 
value  to  the  ceremonial  performances  of  man  or  the  profit- 
able but  unethical  enactments  of  a body  ecclesiastical.  The 
question  was  not  to  him  as  to  the  modern  scholar.  How 
did  the  ecclesiastical  system  come  to  be?  That  question 
implies  a standpoint  much  more  scientific  than  his  ; one  that 
can  do  justice  to  the  Catholic  Church  even  while  indifferent 
to  its  claims.  But  if  his  method  was  less  scientific,  it  was 
more  efficacious  than  the  modern ; for  while  the  modern 
seeks  to  explain,  it  does  not  care  to  overturn  or  supersede ; 
but  Luther  could  only  seek  to  overturn,  while  he  did  not 
care  to  explain.  For  to  him  it  was  impossible  that  both  the 
New  Testament  and  Rome  could  be  right;  whatever  was 


HUMANISTS  BECOME  REFORMERS.  I4I 

wrong,  it  could  not  be  the  New  Testament ; there  stood  the 
mind  of  Christ  and  the  interpretation  of  His  Apostles  ; and 
to  accept  the  one  and  attempt  to  realize  the  other  was  the 
absolute  duty  of  the  Christian  man. 

To  men,  then,  who  believed  that  for  Christianity  the  mind 
of  Christ  was  the  creative  and  normative  mind,  the  appeal  to 
the  sources  was  irresistible  ; and  the  ranks  of  the  Humanists 
soon  confessed  that  it  was  so.  The  older  men,  Reuchlin 
and  Erasmus,  stood  aloof,  but  the  younger  men  were  carried 
away.  Crotus  Rubianus,  Luther’s  “ Crotus  noster  suavissi- 
mus,”  the  most  brilliant  of  the  putative  authors  of  the 
“ Epistolcs  Obscurorum  VirorumP  though  he  was  later  to 
repent  and  return  ; Eobanus  Hess,  “ regius  poeta  et  poeticus 
rex  ” ; Philip  Melanchthon,  scholar  and  divine,  hope  and 
pride  of  his  famous  grand-uncle,  designated  heir  of  his 
splendid  library  ; Justus  Jonas,  most  eloquent  of  the  Human- 
ists and  Reformers,  Melanchthon’s  typical  “ orator,”  “ der 
Mann  der  kann  die  Worte  des  Textes  herrlich  und  deutlich 
aussprechen,  erklaren,  und  zum  Markt  richten  ” ; Ulrich  von 
Hutten,  knight,  patriot,  man  of  letters,  devoted  to  a liberty 
near  akin  to  licence  ; CEkolampadius,  erudite  enough  to  be 
consulted  and  esteemed  by  the  great  Erasmus  ; Camerarius, 
perhaps  best  Grecian  of  his  age,  one  of  the  true  fathers  of 
modern  scholarship,  the  jidus  Achates  of  Melanchthon  ; and 
above  all,  though  he  acted  from  his  own  initiative,  not 
Luther’s,  the  most  heroic  of  the  early  Reformers,  Ulrich 
Zwingli, — these,  and  many  others,  driven  by  the  inexorable 
logic  of  the  situation,  became  leaders  in  the  small  but  reso- 
lute army  of  men  who  were  trying  to  return  to  the 
Christianity  of  Christ.  If  Protestantism  was  not  created  by 
learning,  yet  without  learning  it  could  not  have  been  ; and 
there  was  nothing  more  natural  or  noble  or  necessary  than 
that  the  men  who  had  discovered  the  use  and  meaning  of 
the  primitive  Christian  literature  should  endeavour  to  recover 
and  to  return  to  the  religion  it  revealed. 


142 


THE  NEW  ORDER,  A VERITABLE  CHAOS, 


The  recovery  of  the  ancient  literature  had  thus  resulted 
in  an  attempt  to  realize  the  ancient  and  original  idea.  But 
though  the  attempt  was  inevitable,  the  achievement  was  not 
possible.  Facts  cannot  be  annihilated  or  centuries  elimi- 
nated from  the  life  of  man  ; the  past  will  control  the  present, 
the  present  reverence  the  past,  whatever  logic  may  say. 
There  is  nothing  so  impossible  as  the  restoration  of  a lost 
state  ; the  attempt  is  made  by  men  under  conditions  and  by 
means  of  material  all  so  different  from  the  original  that,  while 
it  may  imitate  the  old,  it  can  never  be  the  old  it  imitates.  And 
here  every  sort  of  obstacle  stood  in  the  way  : Lutheranism 
was  full  of  inconsistencies,  spared  much  which  ought  to  have 
perished,  over-emphasized  its  great  idea,  bound  itself  hastily 
to  definitions  and  formulae  which  produced  new  divisions  and 
a scholasticism  more  bitter,  controversial,  and  unfruitful 
than  the  old.  It  affirmed  man’s  immediate  relation  and 
sole  responsibility  to  God  ; yet  it  organized,  by  the  help 
of  German  princes,  a most  Erastian  Church.  Then  the  new 
movement  became  a sort  of  Cave  of  Adullam  ; men  resorted 
to  it  whose  only  reason  was  discontent  with  the  existing 
order  of  things.  It  is  granted  to  no  revolution  to  be  accom- 
plished by  perfect  men,  but  the  religious  revolution  most 
needs  good  men,  and  it  is  hardly  judged,  often  fatally  hin- 
dered, when  men  figure  in  it  who  are  not  good  : its  own 
misfortunes  injure  it  more  than  do  the  mistakes  or  crimes  of 
the  enemy.  Then  the  most  reasonable  revolution  awakens 
unreason,  the  dissolution  of  an  old  order  begets  the  wish  for 
a dissolution  of  all  order  and  the  reign  of  chaos.  So  after 
Luther  came  Carlstadt,  after  Carlstadt  came  Miinzer,  after 
Miinzer  the  Peasants’  War  ; and  of  course  for  these  the  new 
return  to  the  old  faith  was  held  responsible.  Kings,  with 
faith  in  their  own  Divine  rights,  grew  grave  ; where  the  old 
ecclesiastic  only  troubled  the  new  reformer  threatened  to 
overturn — he  therefore  deserved  no  mercy.  Timid  men,  too, 
who  always  see  double  when  singleness  of  eye  is  most  needed, 


MAKING  OLD  SEEM  A COSMOS. 


143 


argued  : “ The  old  order  was  bad,  still  it  was  order ; we  must 
stand  by  it  against  these  new  ideas,  which  will  subvert  all 
things.”  The  moment  of  dismay  was  the  opportunity  of 
reaction.  Rome  drew  herself  together  and  confronted  her 
disorganized  foe.  In  a system  like  hers  there  were  and  are 
recuperative  energies  of  incalculable  potency,  and  these,  when 
summoned  to  act,  acted.  The  enthusiasm  of  her  noblest  sons 
rose  in  the  presence  of  danger  ; the  meaning  of  her  idea  and 
mission  dawned  once  more  upon  her.  She  contrasted  her 
unbroken  uniformity  with  the  formless  movement  that  had 
risen  against  her,  her  venerable  doctrines  with  the  mad 
imaginations  of  the  German  Anabaptists,  and  asked  : “ Have 
not  I ruled  the  world  these  fifteen  hundred  years  both  bene- 
ficently and  wisely  ? But  if  this  Protestantism,  which  has 
produced  these  lawless  and  levelling  sects,  be  allowed  to 
exist  and  conquer,  what  will  become  of  our  rights,  properties, 
civilization  ? ” The  question  seemed  so  unanswerable  that 
kings  and  nobles,  thinking  there  was  no  choice  between 
anarchy  and  Rome,  marshalled  armies  and  fought  battles 
to  end  what  to  them  was  less  a pestilent  heresy  than  a 
disorganizing  and  destructive  political  movement 


§ IV. — Calvin  and  Geneva. 

But  in  Luther  and  Lutheranism  we  have  only  one  form  of 
the  attempt  to  return  to  the  religion  of  the  sources ; in  Calvin 
and  Calvinism  we  have  another.  These  two  are  very  different. 
The  moving  impulse  was  in  Luther  the  sense  of  sin,  but  in 
Calvin  the  love  of  truth  alike  as  ideal  and  as  reality.  Luther 
finds  in  the  sources  a way  of  escape  from  sin,  Calvin  an  ideal 
which  men  are  bound  to  realize.  Luther’s  passion  was  to 
believe  and  teach  a true  soteriology,  Calvin’s  was  to  build  a 
system  and  a state  in  the  image  of  the  truth  of  God.  In  him 
the  movement  has  its  supreme  constructive  genius.  He  is 
one  of  the  best-hated  men  in  history  ; round  his  name  fierce 


144 


AVERSIONS  CONVERGE  ON  CALVIN. 


controversies  have  raged,  and  still  rage ; and  controversies 
begotten  of  disputatious  hate  and  unreasoning  love  are  things 
the  judicious,  who  love  to  pass  for  judicial  men,  do  not 
care  to  touch.  There  is  something  imposing  in  the  multitude 
and  variety  of  aversions  that  converge  on  Calvin.  He  was 
hated  by  the  Catholics  as  the  author  of  the  system  that 
opposed  the  proudest  and  most  invincible  front  to  Rome  ; 
by  princes  and  statesmen,  as  the  man  who  instituted  a 
Church  that  acted  as  a revolutionary  force  in  politics  ; by 
Anglican  bishops  and  divines,  as  the  father  of  the  Puritanism 
that  so  long  disturbed  their  power  ; by  Arminian  theologians 
as  the  inventor  and  apologist  of  a decretum  horribile,  which 
they  detested,  without  always  making  sure  that  they  under- 
stood ; by  Free  Thinkers,  as  the  man  that  burned  Servetus, 
who,  because  he  was  burned,  must  have  been  a saint,  and 
Calvin,  because  he  burned  him,  a shameless  sinner ; by 
Secular  Republicans,  because  he  founded  a religious  State, 
and  dealt  hardly  with  sins  they  were  inclined  to  ; by  the 
sons  of  Light  and  Culture,  for  the  imperious  ethical  temper 
that  did  not  leave  room  for  the  free  play  of  elements  needed 
to  constitute  their  whole  of  life.  But  the  man  who  has 
touched  so  many  men,  discordant  in  everything  but  this 
concordance  of  hate,  must  have  been  a man  of  transcendent 
power,  whose  character  and  work  deserve  close  and  impartial 
study  from  all  men  who  would  understand  the  sixteenth  and 
the  later  centuries. 

Calvin  was  in  almost  every  respect  a contrast  to  Luther, — 
less  sensuous  and  more  intellectual ; intenser,  but  not  so 
impassioned  ; less  obstinate  and  self-willed,  but  more  imperious 
and  inflexible  ; not  so  amiable,  but  of  a far  loftier  and  more 
ethical  spirit ; possessed  of  a severer  conscience  and  more 
scrupulous  will,  but  of  a nature  less  roomy  and  human- 
hearted.  Luther  was  ever  boisterous,  a man  of  open  sense, 
of  buoyant  and  irrepressible  speech,  whose  words  were  half 
battles,  whose  eye  was  quick  to  see,  whose  heart  was  quick 


THE  TWO  REFORMERS. 


145 


to  feel,  whose  judgment  was  always  in  danger  of  being 
mastered  by  passion  or  blinded  by  pity.  Calvin,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  a man  of  invincible  calm,  of  balanced  speech, 
gentle  towards  weakness,  severe  towards  vice,  severest  of  all 
towards  himself,  for  he  had,  as  Beza  tells  us  in  his  quaint 
French  : “ Une  telle  integrite  de  conscience,  qu’en  fuyant 
toutes  vaines  subtilitez  sophistiques  avec  toute  ambitieuse 
ostentation,  il  n’a  jamais  cerche  que  la  simple  et  pure  verite.”^ 
Calvin  could  never  have  been  guilty  of  the  mistakes  of 
Luther,  especially  such  a disastrous  blending  of  the  blunder 
and  the  crime  as  was  made  in  the  matter  of  the  Landgrave 
Philip  ; but  Luther  could  as  little  have  been  guilty  of  the 
severities  of  Calvin.  Luther  was  incapable  of  conceiving,  to 
say  nothing  of  approving  or  enforcing,  Calvin’s  legislation  : 
his  pity  for  human  weakness  would  have  proved  stronger 
than  his  love  of  an  ideal  that  showed  it  no  mercy  ; but 
Calvin  was  still  more  incapable  of  allowing,  with  Luther, 
the  Church  to  be  a creature  of  the  State.  To  him  it  was 
impossible  that  the  society  which  existed  for  the  realization 
of  the  Divine  law  should  stand  under  a society  whose  laws 
were  made  and  enforced  by  men  for  strictly  temporal  or 
civil  ends.  The  singular  simplicity  of  his  nature  made  him 
love  symmetry  and  system  in  all  things,  consistency  in 
character,  the  veracity  that  made  conviction,  speech,  and 
conduct  all  agree.  It  is  characteristic  that  his  fundamental 
thought  is  not,  as  with  Luther,  justification  by  faith  or  the 
mode  in  which  the  guilty  man  may  be  made  right  with 
God,  but  it  is  grace,  or  the  absoluteness  and  sufficiency 
of  the  will  of  God,  as  the  gracious  will  which  purposes 
and  achieves  salvation.  Calvinism  is  Stoicism  baptized 
into  Christianity,  but  renewed  and  exalted  by  the  baptism. 
It  has  the  fortitude  of  Stoicism,  the  quality  that  enables 
men  to  bend  without  being  broken,  to  submit  without  being 

^ Dedication  to  the  Duchess  of  Ferrara  of  the  “ Petits  Traictez  de 
M.  Jean  Calvin,”  Opera,  vol.  v.,  p.  xv  (Corpus  Ref.). 


10 


146  CALVINISM  BAPTIZED  STOICISM. 

conquered ; it  has  its  indifference  to  suffering,  its  scorn 
of  the  sentiment  that  simply  pities  evil  and  loses  love  of 
existence  in  horror  at  pain  ; it  has  its  optimism,  believes  with 
it  in  the  efficiency  yet  benevolence  of  the  universal  Will,  in 
moral  law  as  absolute,  in  obedience  as  a thing  which  lies 
non  extra  omnem  modo  controversiam,  sed  deliberationem 
quoque.”  But  it  far  transcends  Stoicism,  for  its  Will  is  personal 
while  infinite,  gracious  while  absolute,  so  real  and  efficient 
in  its  working  as  to  have  made  sure  of  all  its  means  and  all 
its  ends.  Man  is  placed  in  time  to  know  and  to  obey  this 
Will,  it  is  revealed  in  nature,  conscience,  grace  ; and  these  are 
so  related  that  knowledge  of  God  and  of  ourselves  are  not 
two  knowledges,  but  one  and  the  same.  To  be  obedient  is 
but  to  follow  nature  in  its  ideal  sense  and  fulfil  the  law  of 
God.  In  its  speculative  elements  Calvin’s  theology  is  one 
with  Augustine’s,  but  not  in  its  political  or  ecclesiastical. 
In  Augustine,  as  we  have  seen,^  the  speculative  and  the 
political  are  contradictory ; the  speculative  was  an  uncon- 
ditional, but  the  political  a conditional  system ; the  high 
necessities  belonging  to  his  theistic  thought  were  qualified, 
and  indeed  negatived,  by  his  regulative  sacerdotalism,  his 
Civitas  Roma  metamorphosed  into  a hieratic  Ecclesia  Christi. 
But  in  Calvin  the  speculative  and  the  political  are  so  related 
that  the  one  is  a deduction  from  the  other  ; his  theology  is 
the  basis  of  his  polity,  his  polity  is  the  application  of  his 
theology  to  society  and  the  State.  His  Church  was  an 
attempt  to  organize  society  through  his  theistic  idea,  to 
build  it  into  a sort  of  articulated  will  of  God.  The  defects 
of  his  theistic  idea  were  expressed  in  his  political  ideal, 
exhibited  in  their  harshest  form  in  his  legislation  and  the 
endeavour  to  enforce  it.  But  the  defects  were  not  those 
of  weakness  or  earthliness  ; they  were  those  of  a too  lofty 
severity,  a too  unyielding  moral  rigor,  due  to  the  belief  that 
God’s  will  was  gracious  in  order  that  man  might  be  righteous, 

* Siipra^  pp.  1 1 5,  1 16. 


ITS  ORIGINAL  SPIRIT  AND  IDEAL. 


147 


and  man’s  duty  was  so  to  live  as  to  cause  this  will  to  be 
realized  in  himself  and  by  all  men.  These  defects  may  have 
showed  ignorance  of  human  weakness,  and  its  strength  ; it 
has  yet  to  be  proved  that  they  showed  anything  ignoble, 
either  in  the  mind  that  made  the  system,  or  in  the  system 
the  mind  made. 

In  order  to  understand  the  mind  and  purpose  of  Calvin 
he  ought  to  be  studied  in  the  first  edition  of  his  “ Institutio,” 
printed  1535,  published  1536.  It  was  written  when  he 
was  but  twenty-six,  an  exile  from  France,  who  had  tried 
many  places,  but  found  a home  in  none,  yet  who  had,  in 
the  face  of  all  his  danger  and  unrest,  worked  out  the  main 
lines  of  his  system.  But  only  the  main  lines : the  first 
edition  is  a mere  sketch,  yet  a sketch  which  lives,  with  this 
characteristic — that  the  emphasis  lies  less  on  dogma  than  on 
morals,  \vorship,  polity.  What  mainly  concerns  him  is  the 
new  order,  what  it  ought  to  be,  how  it  best  may  be.  It  is 
the  work  of  a man  penetrated  with  the  conviction  that  the 
new  Gospel  is  a new  law,  that  the  law  must  be  embodied  in 
a new  life,  individual  and  collective.  The  justified  man  is 
elect  unto  obedience  ; the  good  man  cannot  be  contented 
with  bad  moral  conditions  ; the  perfect  person  needs  a perfect 
society  ; and  so  he  must  labour  to  bring  about  the  conformity 
of  all  things,  but  most  of  all  the  lives  of  men  and  states  to  the 
will  of  God.  The  motive  of  the  book  stands  expressed  in 
the  famous  prefatory  letter  addressed  to  Francis  1.  ; it  was 
meant  to  be  a sort  of  rudiments  by  which  men  touched  by 
a zeal  for  religion  might  be  formed  ad  veram  pietatein.  But 
behind  this  stands  another  motive  : it  is  an  apology  for  the 
Reformed  Faith,  wFich  is  dying  of  odium,  charged  with  being 
the  enemy  of  order,  law,  peace,  and  all  things  that  civilized  men 
hold  dear.  He  demands  that  the  King  hear  him  ; an  unheard 
cause  cannot  be  condemned,  and  the  cause  is  not  his ; it  is 
that  of  all  the  godly — nay,  of  Christ  Himself.  The  graver 
the  cause  the  greater  the  duty  of  the  sovereign,  who  is  bound 


148  THE  CALVINISM  OF  CALVIN  AS  CONSCIOUS 

“agnoscere  se  in  regni  administratione  Dei  ministrum.”  But  he 
must  judge  by  a fit  standard,  by  the  Verbmn  Dei,  interpreted 
according  to  the  analogy  of  faith.  So  tried  the  cause  is  sure 
of  victory.  “ Quid  enim,”  he  asks,  “ melius  atque  aptius  fidei 
convenit,  quam  agnoscere  nos  omni  virtute  nudos  ut  a Deo 
vestiamur,  omni  bono  vacuos  ut  ab  ipso  impleamur,  nos 
peccati  servos  ut  ab  ipso  liberemur,  nos  caecos  ut  ab  ipso 
illuminemur,  nos  claudes  ut  ab  ipso  dirigamur,  nos  debiles  ut 
ab  ipso  sustentemur,  nobis  omnem  gloriandi  materiam  de- 
trahere,  ut  solus  ipse  glorificetur  et  nos  in  ipso  gloriemur  ? ” ^ 
He  follows  up  his  claim  for  a hearing  by  a frank  discussion 
of  the  charges  against  the  Reformed  Faith.  These  are  : The 
doctrine  is  new,  doubtful,  and  uncertain  ; ought  to  be  con- 
firmed by  miracles  ; is  against  the  consent  of  the  Fathers 
and  the  most  ancient  custom  ; is  schismatical  ; and,  finally, 
may  be  known  by  its  fruits — the  sects,  seditions,  licence,  it 
has  produced.  These  charges  he  answers  thus  : The  doctrine 
is  as  old  as  Christ  and  His  Apostles,  as  sure  as  their  word, 
is  confirmed  by  their  miracles,  is  supported  by  the  Fathers, 
maintains  the  unity  of  the  true  Church,  which  may  exist 
without  apparent  form,  and  needs  no  external  splendour  ; but 
is  only  “ pura  Verbi  Dei  praedicatione  et  legitima  Sacramen- 
torum  administratione.”^  Nor  will  he  allow  that  sedition  or 
licence  marks  the  new  faith  : the  men  are  godly  ; loss  and 
suffering,  imprisonment  and  persecution,  have  been  their  only 
reward.  And  here  in  his  book  it  may  be  seen  what  they 
believe  and  mean  : they  stand  by  those  great  realities,  the 
moral  law,  which  tolerates  worship  of  none  but  God,  and 
forbids  all  sin  against  Him  and  against  man  ; the  Apostolic 
faith,  which  stands  lucid,  simple,  sufficient  in  the  Apostolic 
symbol  ; prayer,  which  has  its  perfect  type  in  the  Pater 
Noster ; the  Sacraments  which  Christ  instituted,  and  the 
Church  which  He  founded  to  secure  Christian  liberty,  both 

1 “Inst,,”  “Epis.  Nuiicup.,”  pp.  12,  13. 

2 Ibid.,  p.  21. 


AND  CONSTRUCTIVE  ANTITHESIS  TO  ROME. 


149 


to  man  and  society.  Here,  at  least,  is  no  Lutheran  indi- 
vidualism, no  emotional  conservatism,  broken  into,  but  not 
broken  up,  by  the  forces  of  a moral  revolution  ; but  here  is  a 
constructive  work,  coextensive  with  the  whole  man  and  the 
State.  Calvin  was  as  radical  as  Luther  was  conservative, 
but,  while  radical,  he  was  also  constructive,  just  as  Luther 
had  the  true  conservative  instinct  to  retain,  but  its  no  less 
real  impotence  either  to  design  or  to  build. 

Calvinism  was  thus,  in  a sense  quite  unknown  to  Lutheran- 
ism, the  conscious  and  consistent  antithesis  to  Rome.  For 
one  thing,  a rigorous  and  authoritative  system  was  met  by 
a system  no  less  rigorous  and  authoritative.  The  Roman 
infallibility  was  confronted  by  the  infallibility  of  the  Verbinn 
Dei ; the  authority  of  tradition  by  the  authority  of  reasoned 
yet  Scriptural  doctrine  ; salvation  through  the  Church  by 
salvation  through  Christ  ; the  efficacy  of  the  Sacraments  by 
the  efficacy  of  the  Spirit  ; the  power  of  the  priesthood  by  the 
power  of  the  ever-present  Christ.  The  strength  of  Calvinism 
lay  in  the  place  and  pre-eminence  it  gave  to  God  : it  magni- 
fied Him  ; humbled  man  before  His  awful  majesty,  yet  lifted 
man  in  the  very  degree  that  it  humbled  him.  Catholicism 
is  essentially  a doctrine  of  the  Church  ; Calvinism  is  essen- 
tially a doctrine  of  God.  In  days  when  men  have  little 
faith  in  the  supernatural  and  transcendental,  Catholicism  is 
an  enormous  power ; its  appeal  to  history  is  an  appeal  to 
experience,  and  men  will  cling  to  its  traditions  in  the  very 
degree  that  they  have  lost  faith  in  God  ; but  in  days  when 
men  are  possessed  by  faith  in  an  all-sufficient  Reason  that 
knows  all  and  never  can  be  deceived,  in  an  all-sufficient  Will 
that  guides  all  and  never  can  be  defeated  or  surprise*d,  then 
the  theology  that  holds  them  will  be  the  theology  that  makes 
God  most  real  to  the  intellect  and  most  authoritative  to  the 
conscience.  And  it  was  at  this  point  and  by  this  means  that 
Calvinism  so  seized  and  so  commanded  men,  faith  in  God 
being  ever  a less  earthly  and  a sublimer  thing  than  faith  in 


ISO  THE  ORDER  OF  ROME  AND  OF  GENEVA. 

a Church.  Then,  for  a second  thing,  Geneva  served  in  an 
equal  degree  the  cause  of  freedom  and  of  order.  Calvinism 
was  the  very  genius  of  system  in  theology  and  of  order  in 
polity.  These  two  stood  together ; the  one  was  a logical 
corollary  from  the  other,  yet  appeared  also  as  a copy  of  the 
ancient  Scriptural  model.  But  while  order  was  as  necessary 
to  Geneva  as  to  Rome,  it  was  for  reasons  so  different  that 
the  order  did  not  remain  the  same.  The  order  Rome  main- 
tained was  autocratic,  personalized  in  the  Pope,  incorporated 
in  the  Church,  realized  by  its  authority  ; the  order  Geneva 
created  was  democratic,  personalized  in  God,  incorporated  in 
the  Apostolic  Society,  realized  by  the  authority  of  conscience. 
Roman  order  was  external,  imposed  from  without ; Genevan 
order  internal,  evoked  from  within.  Hence  while  Rome  could, 
in  alliance  with  an  absolute  monarch,  realize  its  order,  the 
Genevan  could  be  realized  only  by  and  through  the  people. 
It  might  be  tyrannical  in  exercise  ; it  must  be  popular  in 
basis,  and  the  basis  was  determinative  ; in  it  lay  all  the  possi- 
bilities of  freedom  and  progress.  With  it  a regal  supremacy 
in  things  spiritual  and  ecclesiastical  was  as  incompatible  as 
a papal ; and  where  it  prevailed,  rule  based  on  a single  will 
became  impossible.  It  thus  allied  itself  with  the  rights  of 
the  people  and  the  spirit  of  political  progress,  the  countries 
which  were  most  penetrated  by  it  being  precisely  the  countries 
which  have  become  the  most  conspicuous  examples  of  ordered 
freedom.  For  a third  thing,  Geneva  became  the  Protestant 
city  of  refuge  ; hither  came  Spanish,  Italian,  French,  German, 
Netherlandish,  English,  and  Scotch  refugees  and  exiles.  Each 
saw  the  order  that  reigned  in  the  city,  felt  Calvin’s  powerful 
influence,  acknowledged  his  superlative  genius,  beheld  his 
splendid  success.  And  so  each  came  to  admire  and  love  the 
Genevan  Church  model  as  the  most  perfect  realizable  on 
earth,  and  went  home  determined  to  labour  even  unto  death 
for  its  introduction  and  establishment.  Then  Calvin  acquired 
and  exercised  a patriarchal  authority.  He  corresponded 


THE  CITY  A CHURCH  AND  COLLEGE.  151 

with  all  the  Churches ; advised,  instructed  on  all  questions 
of  internal  organization,  doctrine,  and  discipline  ; on  the  rela- 
tion to  the  State,  whether  friendly  or  adverse  ; on  the  relation 
to  other  Churches,  whether  Protestant  or  Popish  ; indeed,  on 
all  subjects  which  then  arose  of  general  or  local  importance. 
And,  besides,  Geneva  was  a sort  of  college,  where  young  men 
were  trained  for  the  ministry,  and  whence  they  were  de- 
spatched to  their  own  countries  to  teach  the  new  faith.  And 
of  the  men  trained  there  Michelet  truly  says  : “ If  in  any 
part  of  Europe  blood  and  tortures  were  required,  a man  to 
be  burnt  or  broken  on  the  wheel,  that  man  was  at  Geneva, 
ready  to  depart,  giving  thanks  to  God,  and  singing  psalms 
to  Him.”  Can  we  wonder  that  the  faith  propagated  by  men 
who  feared  no  human  face  should  have  spread  so  far,  and 
become  so  prolific  a nurse  of  heroes? 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  MODERN  CHURCHES  AND  THEIR  THEOLOGIES. 


E have  said  that  the  attempt  to  return  to  the  religion 


of  the  sources  was  an  impossible  attempt  ; but  this 


statement  requires  a double  qualification.  First,  the  Church, 
so  long  as  it  believes  in  the  divinity  of  its  Founder,  is  bound 
to  have  a history  which  shall  consist  of  successive  and  pro- 
gressively successful  attempts  to  return  to  Him.  He  can 
never  be  transcended  ; all  it  can  ever  be  is  contained  in  Him  ; 
but  its  ability  to  interpret  Him  and  realize  His  religion 
ought  to  be  a developing  ability.  It  was  as  a little  bit  of 
leaven  that  the  Christian  faith  entered  the  consciousness 
of  pagan  man,  and  only  by  the  slow  process  of  expansion 
and  penetration  can  it  expel  the  pagan  and  create  the 
Christian.  And  each  attempt  to  return  is  at  once  a condition 
and  a measure  of  this  growth,  springing  from  a new  sense 
of  the  necessity  and  supremacy  of  Christ,  and  exhibiting  the 
degree  in  which  it  has  become  possible  truly  to  apprehend 
Him.  Secondly,  the  causes  that  in  this  case  made  the  return 
impossible  did  not  prevent  the  attempt  becoming  a revolution 
that  was  almost  equal  to  a return.  For  one  thing,  it  made 
other  and  later  attempts  both  possible  and  necessary,  with 
more  promise  of  success  for  the  later.  For  another  thing, 
it  showed  that  as  the  cause  of  the  attempt  was  the  new 
knowledge  of  the  sources,  so  the  cause  of  the  failure  was  the 
persistence  of  the  old  consciousness.  In  other  words,  the 
theology  remained  for  all  specifically  Western,  under  forms 


DETERMINATIVE  IDEAS  INSTITUTIONAL  OR  THEOLOGICAL.  I 5 3 

more  or  less  Augustinian,  though  no  longer  co-ordinated  as 
in  Augustine  It  was  this  change  in  the  co-ordination  that 
was  the  significant  thing.  It  is  the  essence  of  all  revolutions 
that  nothing  continues  as  it  was  before  ; certain  institutions 
may  survive,  but  they  are  not  the  old  institutions  ; for  they 
are  made  different  by  the  different  world  they  live  in,  and 
where  a common  change  has  come  there  all  the  old  things 
have  passed  away  and  all  things  have  become  new. 

§ I. — Relation  of  Church  to  Theology. 

What  we  have  now  to  study,  then,  is  how  the  changed 
conditions  and  the  new  and  different  factors  affected  the 
development  of  theology.  With  the  modern  Churches, 
their  formation,  constituents,  constitution,  history,  we  have 
no  concern,  save  in  so  far  as  they  are  related  to  our  question. 
This  relation  varies  according  as  the  determinative  idea 
belongs  to  the  Church  or  to  the  Theology.  We  may  describe 
this  idea  as,  in  the  former  case,  political  or  institutional, 
in  the  latter,  intellectual  and  ethical.  If  the  primary  and 
material  conception  is  the  Church,  then  the  Theology  is  read 
through  it,  and  as  authenticated  and  determined  by  it ; but  if 
this  conception  be  the  Theology,  then  the  Church  is  construed 
through  it,  and  judged,  either  justified  or  condemned,  by  the 
truth  it  professes  to  hold  and  to  be  bound  to  incorporate. 
In  the  one  case  the  society  is  conceived  as  possessed  of 
a given  constitution,  say  monarchical  or  oligarchical,  which 
is  necessary,  not  only  to  its  bene  esse^  but  to  its  very  esse\ 
in  the  other  case  certain  beliefs  are  conceived  as  means 
used  of  God  to  change  and  command  men  and  organize  a 
new  spiritual  society.  Where  the  political  idea  comes  first, 
the  Theology  has  more  or  less  a legal  character,  appears 
as  consuetudinary  or  as  constitutional  law, — as  the  one  it 
is  thought  or  opinion  received  or  allowed  ; as  the  other  it 
is  opinion  fixed,  formulated,  legalized,  become  dogma.  In 


154 


INSTITUTIONAL  THEOLOGIES 


dealing  with  it  men  have  all  the  latitude  and  all  the  limita- 
tions so  familiar  to  the  interpreters  of  written  and  unwritten 
laws, — some  reading  the  great  ecumenical  creeds  literally,  others 
liberally,  as  mere  delimitations,  marking  off  the  forbidden, 
some  taking  them  in  the  sense  of  the  great  constitutional 
lawyers — i.e.,  the  Fathers  and  Schoolmen ; others  carrying 
into  them,  with  more  or  less  regard  to  the  ancient  forms, 
the  sense  of  their  own  day.  But  in  every  case  the  idea  of 
the  relation  is  the  same ; the  Church  is  the  prior ; Theology 
has  no  being  apart  from  it ; is  defined,  articulated,  authenti- 
cated by  it ; and  the  function  of  the  theologian  is  simply 
to  interpret  in  terms  intelligible  to  living  men  what  has 
been  so  constituted.  He,  too,  has  thus  no  being  apart  from 
the  Church  ; he  must  be  of  it  to  have  Theology,  or  to  know 
and  be  under  the  laws  which  govern  its  interpretation.  And 
so  it  becomes  a thing  institutional,  legal,  dogmatic,  moving 
within  the  region  of  positive  law.  On  the  other  hand,  where 
the  theological  idea  comes  first,  the  Theology  appears  as  a 
body  of  beliefs  or  regulative  ideas,  creative  and  life-giving 
truths  which  the  Church  must  receive  that  it  may  live,  study 
and  explain  that  it  may  live  more  abundantly.  In  other 
words,  these  truths  are  at  once  creative  and  normative,  not  so 
much  the  possession  as  the  possessors  of  the  Church,  the 
medium  in  and  through  which  it  has  its  being.  It  receives 
them,  not  once  for  all,  but  ever  anew,  from  the  hand  of 
its  Creator,  and  as  He  is  personal  they  become  the  means 
of  cultivating  personal  relations.  And  so  there  emerges  a 
further  distinction  ; the  institutional  can  never  be  historical, 
save  in  so  far  as  history  is  identical  with  the  being  of  the 
institution,  but  the  theological  must  be  historical,  for  apart 
from  its  source,  and  its  true  apprehension  and  assimilation 
of  the  same,  it  has  no  right  to  be.  Where  the  political  idea 
reigns,  the  action  of  God  outside  the  political  area  is 
conceived  as  irregular,  illicit,  or  uncovenanted  ; where  the 
theological  idea  reigns,  the  Church  must  be  as  it  were  His 


AND  THEOLOGICAL  CHURCHES 


55 


visible  image, — He  too  large  to  be  confined  within  the  insti- 
tutions of  men,  they  too  hard  and  narrow  to  be  equal  to  His 
penetrative  and  expansive  grace. 

Now,  the  Churches  that  emerged  at  the  Reformation  may 
be  divided  into  three  classes, — the  strictly  institutional,  or 
Roman  Catholic  ; the  strictly  theological,  or  Lutheran  and 
Reformed  ; and  the  mixed,  where  both  characters  exist  as 
distinct  and  conflicting  schools,  or  the  Anglican. 

These  Churches  are  all  at  once  ancient  and  modern  ; each 
represents  in  a different  aspect  at  once  the  continuity  of 
history  and  the  changes  effected  by  the  religious  revolution. 
These  changes  were  equally  radical  in  all  the  Churches, 
though  in  each  differently  formulated,  the  elements,  old  and 
new,  being  by  each  specifically  combined  and  organized.  In 
Catholicism  we  have  the  continuity  of  Western  institutions, 
Roman,  political,  and  ecclesiastical ; in  the  Reformed  com- 
munities we  have  the  continuity  of  Western  religious 
thought ; while  in  all  we  have  the  only  real  form  of  Apostolic 
succession,  the  continuity  of  holy  persons,  convinced  and 
reverent  Christian  men.  Rome  accepted  and  developed  the 
polity  of  Augustine,  but  qualified  his  theology  into  what  he 
would  have  considered  its  negation.  Luther  and  Calvin  both 
rejected  his  polity  ; but  the  one  made  his  theories  of  human 
nature  and  grace  the  bases  of  a doctrine  of  justification  by 
faith,  the  other  his  theory  of  the  Divine  sovereignty  and  will 
the  regulative  idea  of  a more  consistent  and  absolute  system. 
In  the  Anglican  Church  the  Catholic  or  institutional  school 
has  least  represented  the  continuity  of  thought,  and  the 
theological  and  evangelical  has  least  emphasized  the  historical 
institution.  They  but  exhibit  on  a diminished  scale  and  in 
a more  modified  form  the  characteristics  and  conflicts  of  the 
larger  Churches  with  their  larger  controversies.  Each  of 
these  Churches,  then,  has  its  special  material  and  determina- 
tive conception  of  the  Christian  religion  ; in  Catholicism  it 
is  the  Papal  Church,  in  Lutheranism  justification  by  faith,  in 


156  THE  ROMAN  TPIEOLOGY  THE  YOUNGEST. 

Calvinism  the  sovereignty  of  God,  in  x^nglicanism  now,  to 
the  Catholic,  the  episcopate  in  the  Church,  now,  to  the  Evan- 
gelical, the  doctrine  of  grace  or  salvation  or  the  second  birth. 
The  development  of  Theology  in  these  Churches  has  been 
governed  by  this  material  conception  conditioned  by  the 
external  factors  or  the  events  of  history. 

§ II.— Catholicism  and  Theology. 

Within  Catholicism  the  place  and  history  of  theology  have 
been  determined  by  its  essentially  political  or  institutional 
character.  Catholic  Theology  is  only  a branch  of  Catholic 
politics ; it  does  not  transcend  the  sphere  of  jurispru- 
dence, or  the  scientific  interpretation  of  law,  positive  or 
consuetudinary.  The  theologian  can  never  get  behind  the 
institution  ; it  surrounds  him,  fills  him,  teaches,  guides, 
superintends  him,  allows  him  as  a theologian  no  independent 
being  of  his  own  or  apart  from  it.  For  him  to  attempt  to 
return  to  the  sources  would  be  to  contradict  his  material 
conception.  If  he  would  go,  he  must  be  taken  by  his 
Church,  to  find  what  it  has  found,  to  think  what  it  has 
determined.  But  since  the  Church  is  primarily  the  source 
and  basis  of  the  Theology,  the  Theology  must  be  explicative 
of  the  Church,  a science  of  its  being,  adapted  to  its  character, 
suited  to  its  condition  and  needs.  Here,  then,  is  involved  a 
twofold  formal  factor,  one  springing  from  the  character  of 
the  institution,  the  other  from  its  circumstances.  What  these 
were  and  how  they  affected  Catholic  Theology  we  must  now 
seek  to  understand. 

Modern  Catholicism  dates  from  the  Council  of  Trent,  as 
Lutheranism  from  the  Confession  of  Augsburg,  and*  Calvinism 
from  the  appearance  of  the  “ Institutes  ” and  the  Genevan 
Catechism.  The  earlier  creeds  affected  the  later  ; the  Roman 
is  the  polemical  antithesis  of  the  Protestant ; but  though  it 
professed  only  to  formulate,  yet,  by  the  very  nature  of  the 


ITS  ANTITHESIS  TO  THE  PROTESTANT. 


157 


case,  it  changed  by  formulating.  A custom  ceases  to  be  old 
and  kindly  and  fluid  when  fixed  in  a hard-and-fast  decree. 
Besides,  it  is  with  a Church  as  with  a country  which  has  lived 
for  many  centuries  without  a written  constitution,  but  is  sud- 
denly, by  a revolution  and  in  face  of  it,  forced  for  defensive 
and  offensive  purposes  alike,  to  frame  a constitution.  What 
is  so  extorted  will  not  be  a pure,  unmixed  transcript  of  the 
ancient  customs  and  beliefs,  for  the  State  will  be  unable  to 
forget  the  revolution,  or  do  other  than  adapt  its  old  laws  to  its 
new  needs.  And  so  the  decrees  and  canons  of  Trent  mark 
the  transition  of  Rome  from  the  freedom  of  an  unwritten  to 
the  bondage  of  a written  constitution.  Conflicting  views  and 
interests,  indeed,  helped  by  trained  diplomacy,  made  care- 
fully framed  and  skilfully  qualified  formulm  mitigate  the  evil, 
but  it  was  too  real  an  evil  to  be  capable  of  complete  miti- 
gation. In  definitions  all  things  are  not  possible  even  to  the 
choicest  ambiguity.  The  institution,  with  all  its  anomalies,  is 
maintained  ; the  emphasis  everywhere  falls  on  it,  determining 
the  place,  relation,  and  form  of  every  doctrine  ; but  still  the 
maintenance  is  qia’ified  by  being  in  the  face  of  the  enemy. 
The  claim  of  the  Church  to  be  authoritative  and  continuous 
is  never  forgotten,  but  neither  is  the  necessity  of  opposition 
to  the  Reformed  communities.  But  the  polemics  were  not 
always  compatible  with  the  continuity,  and  so  the  Theology 
leans  to  the  semi-Pelagian,  as  the  Reformed  to  the  Augus- 
tinian.  The  action  and  grace  of  God  are  limited  and  con- 
ditioned by  the  institution,  or  the  need  of  finding  a place 
and  a function  for  the  Sacraments.  Men,  too,  must  have 
some  ability  as  well  as  reason  for  obedience  to  the  Church, 
and  so  room  has  to  be  found  for  works  and  a freedom  of  will 
which  the  theological  soul  of  Augustine  would  have  loathed. 
The  value  of  direct  and  decided  antagonism  was  well  under- 
stood at  Trent,  though  qualified  by  the  division  of  mind  and 
school  in  the  council ; but  later  it  was  made  efficient  by  the 
policy  of  the  Jesuits.  In  their  hands  theology  became  at 


158  BY  FORMULATING  HER  DOCTRINE  OF  SCRIPTURE, 

times  even  Pelagian,  that  it  might  the  better  contradict  the 
high  Augustinianism  of  Calvin  ; and  their  hostility  to  Jan- 
senism was  due  not  only  to  its  affinities  with  the  Reformed 
faith,  but  to  their  keen  insight  into  its  fundamental  incom- 
patibility with  the  autocratic  and  sacerdotal  institution 
which  they  called  the  Church. 

Then  necessities  at  once  political  and  polemical  compelled 
the  council  to  formulate  a doctrine  of  the  Scriptures  and 
define  their  relation  to  the  Church ; and  though  these  neces- 
sities seemed  coincident,  they  were  in  reality  diverse.  If  only 
Catholicism  could  have  lived  under  an  unwritten  constitution, 
it  might  have  been  capable  of  indefinite  adaptation  to  its  many 
and  most  dissimilar  environments ; but  to  this  the  written 
law  set  a limit,  especially  in  the  doctrine  as  to  the  Scriptures. 
Tradition  and  Scripture  were  made  the  joint  sources  of  revela- 
tion ; but  the  canon  and  the  version  that  had  been  in  use  in  the 
Roman  Church  were  sanctioned,  and  the  office  of  interpreter 
was  reserved  for  the  Church.  These  were  all  antitheses  to  the 
Protestant  theses.  By  the  first  the  Church  and  the  Scriptures 
were  so  bound  together  that  neither  could  be  had  alone,  or 
live  or  be  believed  alone ; by  the  second  the  Apocrypha  was 
made  as  canonical  as  the  Hebrew  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment or  the  Apostolic  books  of  the  New;  by  the  third  a 
most  manifestly  incorrect  version  and  corrupt  text  was  made 
authoritative  ; and  by  the  fourth  the  Church  was  made  master 
of  the  whole  situation  by  being  alone  possessed  of  the  power 
to  read  what  was  written.  Trent  here  attempted  what  no 
Church  or  council  had  dared  to  attempt,  and  the  Fathers,  by 
following  their  keen  political  and  polemical  instincts,  lost 
their  great  opportunity.  They  made  the  attitude  of  Rome 
to  the  Bible  as  abjectly  traditional  as  that  of  Protestantism 
was  strenuously  historical ; criticism  of  the  Scriptures  as 
canonized  and  sanctioned  at  Trent  is  as  fatal  to  Catholicism 
as  the  critical  use  of  them  is  necessary  to  the  continued  being 
of  the  Reformed  Churches.  The  Church  that  is  bound  to  a 


ROME  LOSES  HER  OPrORTUNITY. 


159 


given  canon,  version,  and  text  by  its  own  decisions  is  more 
the  slave  of  the  letter  than  the  Church  that  must  find  the 
spirit  within  the  letter  in  order  to  be  able  to  live.  The  time 
came  when  Rome  could  have  accomplished  great  things  in 
polemics  and  even  in  science  if  only  Trent  had  never  spoken, 
and  she  had  sons  enough  both  able  and  willing  to  attempt  it, 
but  its  speech  compelled  their  silence.  The  Nemesis  that 
overtook  it  was  the  inability  to  handle  critically  the  books  its 
enemy  lived  by,  for  if  it  had  done  so  the  result  would  have 
been  the  disproof  of  its  own  decisions  and  the  invalidation  of 
its  own  claims. 

This  relation  to  the  Church  deprives  Catholic  Theology 
of  all  independent  character.  In  its  service  men  of  large 
scholarship  and  polemical  genius  have  worked,  but  they  have 
been  unable  to  make  it  a free  and  full  science  of  God,  because 
the  first  necessity  was  to  make  it  a servant  of  their  Church. 
We  ought  never  to  forget  our  obligations  to  the  learning  of 
the  Benedictines  and  the  Jesuits,  but  the  necessity  of  making 
every  way  lead  to  Rome  has  prevented  the  rise  of  systems 
that  seek  to  transcend  the  institutions  of  man  and  to  be 
worthy  of  the  majesty  and  grace  of  God.  The  development 
which  is  but  a form  of  political  activity  may  have  theological 
interests,  but  is  not  the  development  of  a Theology. 

§ III. — The  Lutheran  Theology. 

The  Lutheran  Theology,  on  the  other  hand,  created  the 
Lutheran  Church.  It  was  organized  by  a body  of  beliefs  and 
in  order  to  their  realization.  These  beliefs  were  of  a kind 
that  could  not  live  under  Catholicism,  nor  could  it  allow  them 
to  live.  They  were  throughout  the  negation  of  the  right  of 
a sacerdotal  institution  to  be,  to  hold  any  place  or  exercise 
any  function  as  between  God  and  man.  Luther,  when  he 
said  that  justification  by  faith  was  the  article  of  a standing 
or  falling  Church,  stated  the  exact  truth.  He  meant  to  say. 


l6o  LUTHERAN  THEOLOGY  NORMATIVE. 

in  the  terms  of  the  New  Testament,  especially  of  Paul, 
that  God  in  Christ  is  the  sole  and  sufficient  Saviour.  He 
affirmed  what  was  to  him  no  abstract  doctrine,  but  the  most 
concrete  of  all  realities,  incarnated  in  the  person  and  passion 
of  Jesus  Christ,  drawing  from  Him  its  eternal  and  universal 
significance.  But  because  its  source  and  being  were  so 
august,  no  institution  or  society  of  sinful  men  could  limit 
it,  or  be  the  sole  channel  of  its  distribution,  none  could 
command  the  approaches  to  it,  or  frame  other  terms  for  its 
acceptance  than  God  Himself  had  framed.  Hence  the  Church 
must  be  adjusted  to  this  fundamental  belief ; it  could  not  be 
accommodated  to  the  rites  or  laws  of  any  Church. 

The  Theology,  then,  was  primary  and  normative,  the 
Church  secondary  and  normated,  which  may  seem  to  mean 
that  the  religion  had  again  become  an  ideal  seeking  a fit 
medium  or  society  in  which  to  live.  But  in  order  to  see  what 
it  means  and  how  it  affected  the  development  of  the  Theology 
we  must  recall  the  historical  conditions.  Luther  came  to 
the  principle  he  found  in  Paul  through  his  own  experience 
and  the  theology  of  Augustine.  The  antithesis  was  the 
same  in  both — sin  and  grace.  He  conceived  his  sin  and  his 
relation  to  God  under  forms  more  or  less  forensic  ; he  con- 
ceived God’s  relation  to  him  in  terms  more  or  less  evangelical 
— i.e.,  as  relations  above  law,  gracious,  spontaneous,  immediate. 
As  guilty  he  was  condemned,  deserved  nothing  but  punish- 
ment ; law  could  not  help  him,  and  he  could  do  nothing  to 
merit  its  help.  If  any  help  came  it  must  be  from  God  ; 
and  He  could  not  help  because  of  anything  in  a creature 
who  was  without  merit,  but  only  because  of  His  own  free  love. 
Christ  was  God’s  means  of  sending  this  help,  and  faith 
the  condition  of  our  participation  in  Him.  This  faith 
was  no  meritorious  act ; it  was  simply  the  immediate 
opening  of  the  soul  to  God,  enabling  God,  by  changing 
all  the  soul’s  affections  and  relations,  to  make  it  a changed 
soul.  The  Lutheran  theology  came  into  being  as  a 


THE  SCRIPTURES,  CHURCH,  AND  SACRAMENTS.  l6l 

philosophy  of  these  acts  and  relations  ; it  is  essentially  a 
soteriology,  a science  of  the  Redeemer’s  person  and  work, 
profoundly  conscious  of  man’s  sin  and  the  grace  by  which 
he  is  saved.  But  this  theology  had  to  be  worked  into 
relation  with  history  and  experience.  It  could  not  recognize 
the  truth  of  an  institution  which  had  usurped  the  august 
predicates  of  Christ,  and  so  been  guilty  of  blasphemy  against 
the  most  holy  God,  and  it  would  not  divorce  the  religion 
from  all  forms  of  realized  being.  To  it  two  things  were 
necessary, — the  Scriptures,  the  source  of  all  our  knowledge 
of  the  justifying  Person  ; and  the  Sacraments,  means  by  which 
His  people  communicated  with  Him,  especially  in  the  act 
of  His  passion  and  death.  As  regards  the  Scriptures,  the 
early  Lutheran  doctrine  was  clear  and  brave.  It  did  not, 
like  the  Roman,  make  the  Church  the  slave  of  the  letter. 
The  Scriptures  were  our  sources,  but  they  must  be  read  in 
the  light  of  the  central  idea.  The  truth  was  not  true  because 
they  contained  it ; they  were  true  because  of  the  truth  they 
contained.  Hence  the  freedom  of  the  Lutheran  criticism  ; 
it  was  bound  by  no  ecclesiastical  canon,  did  not  commit 
the  blunder  of  confounding  canonization  with  inspiration, 
but  made  the  sacred  literature  a living  literature,  authenti- 
cated by  its  power  to  give  life.  As  regards  the  Sacrament 
of  the  Supper,  transubstantiation  was  denied ; but,  owing 
to  Luther’s  strong  conservative  instincts,  consubstantiation, 
or  the  presence  of  the  body  and  blood  within  the  elements, 
was  affirmed.  Hence  came  certain  problems  for  Lutheran 
Christology  : How  was  this  presence  and  distribution  of  the 
body  to  be  conceived  ? The  Redeemer  was  in  heaven,  and 
where  He  was  His  body  must  be : how,  then,  could  it  be  at 
once  there  and  here  ? The  attempted  solutions  were  many, 
all  centring  in  the  relations  of  the  natures  not  to  the  person, 
but  to  each  other,  elaborate  theories  of  the  connnunicatio 
idiomatum  taking  shape  and  forming  schools  in  what  seems 
the  bitterest  and  most  unfruitful  controversy  of  even  the 


I 


1 62  INCARNATION  ULTIMATE  IN  LUTHERAN, 

sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  But  things  are  not  always 
what  they  seem  ; the  question  represents  the  great  contri- 
bution of  the  Lutheran  Church  to  constructive  theology.  The 
Incarnation  has  been  its  problem  as  it  has  been  the  problem 
of  no  other  Church,  not  even  of  the  ancient  Greek.  In  the 
nineteenth  century,  as  in  the  sixteenth,  it  has  travailed  at  a 
scientific  Christology,  though  from  the  opposite  end  of  the 
scale.  It  laboured  at  it  then  by  attempting  to  make  the  man- 
hood capable  of  receiving  the  Deity,  but  now,  by  reversing 
the  process,  at  making  the  Deity  capable  of  losing  itself, 
though  only  anew  and  more  gloriously  to  find  itself,  in  the 
manhood.  In  all  the  kenotic  theories  there  are  exaggerations 
and  suppressions  and  mysteries,  that  grow  more  mysterious 
by  being  looked  at ; but  one  thing  they  have  done — they  have 
made  men  see  that  the  Incarnation  is  the  symbol  at  once 
of  the  highest  mystery  and  the  highest  truth.  It  holds  the 
key  to  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  God  and  man  ; it  is 
that  problem  summarized,  recapitulated,  impersonated.  The 
philosophers  who  have  most  strenuously  handled  and  most 
nearly  solved  the  problem  have  been  sons  of  the  land  and 
Church  of  Luther ; and  the  theologians  of  other  lands  and 
Churches  that  have  to-day  attempted  through  the  Incarnation 
to  vivify  theology  and  relate  it  to  modern  knowledge,  are 
only  paying  unconscious  but  deserved  homage  to  the  faith 
and  insight  of  the  reformer  and  his  sons.^ 

§ IV. — The  Reformed  Theology. 

In  the  Reformed  as  in  the  Lutheran  Church,  the  theology 
was  primary  and  normative ; but  the  determinative  concep- 
tion was  different.  Calvin,  like  Luther,  read  theology  through 
Augustine  and  without  his  ecclesiology,  but  from  an  alto- 
gether opposite  point  of  view.  Luther  started  with  the  an- 
thropology, and  advanced  from  below  upwards  ; Calvin  started 
with  the  theology,  and  moved  from  above  downwards.  Hence 
1 Cf.  mfra^  pp.  257,  258. 


WILL  OF  GOD  IN  REFORMED  THEOLOGY.  163 

his  determinative  idea  was  not  justification  by  faith,  but  God 
and  His  sovereignty,  or  the  sole  and  all-efficiency  of  His 
gracious  will.  Reformed  theology  is,  therefore,  throughout  in 
character  and  in  essence  a doctrine  of  God,  and  its  history 
is  but  a record  of  changes  or  modifications  in  this  ultimate 
and  normative  conception.  As  God  was  construed  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  anti-Pelagian  Augustine,  He  was  conceived, 
under  the  category  of  will,  as  the  absolute  Iniperator  or 
Sovereign  of  a revolted  state  or  civitas.  While  He  had  the 
attributes  both  of  justice  and  grace,  and  because  of  the  one 
punished  and  because  of  the  other  saved,  yet  both  were 
more  qualities  of  will  than  of  character.  As  a consequence 
there  emerged  very  early  two  types  or  schools  of  thought,  dis- 
tinguished by  the  different  emphasis  they  laid  on  the  scope 
and  efficiency  of  the  Divine  will — the  supralapsarian  and  the 
sublapsarian.  The  former  placed  the  Divine  decrees  above 
or  before  the  Fall,  the  latter  below  it.  The  schools  hold  too 
important  a place  in  the  development  both  of  philosophy 
and  theology  to  allow  us  to  pass  them  over  in  silence. 

I.  The  supralapsarian  is  the  highest  speculative  Calvinism, 
and  may  be  described  as  a philosophy  based  on  a rigorous 
theory  of  the  Divine  will  as  conditioned  and  qualified  by 
the  Divine  nature,  and  by  nothing  else.^  The  nature  of 
God  determined  both  His  ends  and  the  means  necessary 
to  their  realization.^  As  it  was  they  must  be ; nothing  in 
the  creature  could  move  the  Creator,  for  only  an  infinite 
motive  could  move  the  infinite  mind,  and  it  did  not 

^ Zanchius,  “ De  Natura  Dei,”  lib.  iii.,  cap.  iv.,  quaes,  xi.,  thesis  iii. : “ Quod 
Deus  suam  gloriam,  suam  bonitatem,  denique  seipsum  velit ; hoc  tacit 
neque  ab  ulla  re  permotus  neque  secundum  beneplacitum  voluntatis  suae 
neque  in  aliquem  finem  : sed  ex  necessitate  naturae.” 

2 Ibid.^  quaes,  vi.,  thesis:  “Quae  Deus  vult  de  seipso,  necessario 
vult;  quae  autem  de  creaturis,  ea  vult  iibere.”  This  is  an  important 
distinction,  but  is  made  in  the  interests  of  a doctrine  of  freedom  and 
necessity  which  practically  anticipates  Spinoza’s,  ut  infra,  p.  166.  There 
must  be  no  constraint  or  even  sufficient  motive  from  without  if  God  is 
to  be  a perfectly  free  Being. 


164 


CALVINISM  A STOICAL  PANTHEISM. 


become  the  majesty  of  the  Supreme  to  find  reasons  for 
His  action  in  any  realm  or  form  of  being  below  His  own.^ 
Hence  the  ends  of  God  were  all  contained  in  the  nature  of 
God  ; and  as  the  last  or  absolute  end  was  His  own  glory, 
His  must  also  be  the  means  to  realize  it,  for  only  an 
infinite  will  could  work  out  the  ends  of  the  Infinite, 
and  it  was  impossible  that  the  Sovereign  of  all  could 
allow  any  subject  or  any  number  of  subjects  to  frustrate 
His  purpose.  The  system  was  worked  out  from  these 
premisses  with  relentless  logic,  and  a moral  severity  worthy 
of  Stoicism.  It  was  Stoical  in  its  ethical  temper,  in  its 
ideal  at  once  of  obedience  and  submission,  in  its  love  of 
virtue  and  scorn  of  vice  ; while  on  the  intellectual  side  it  was, 
as  Stoicism  was,  Pantheistic  in  all  its  fundamental  concep- 
tions. God’s  was  the  only  efficient  will  in  the  universe,  and 
so  He  was  the  one  ultimate  causal  reality.^  Calvin  was  as 
pure,  though  not  as  conscious  and  consistent  a Pantheist  as 
Spinoza,^  and  some  of  the  inconsistencies  that  he  spared  the 
later  supralapsarians  did  their  best  to  remove.^  While  they 
conceived  God  as  conscious  and  voluntary,  and  therefore  per- 
sonal, yet  they  cancelled  this  conception  by  the  now  implicit, 

^ Zanchius,  lib.  iii.,  cap.  iv.,  quaes,  xi.,  thesis  iii.,  § 3:  “Finis  autem  ultima, 
cujus  causa  Deus  reliqua  omnia  quae  sunt,  fecit  et  facit;  fuit  sempiterna 
ipsius  gloria.”  . . . “ Atque  ita  deinceps,  pulcherrimo  ordine,  ad  hos 
primarios  fines,  omnia  voluit  et  sapientissime  ordinavit.  Atque  omnia 
haec  sanctissima  decreta,  ab  omni  aeternitate  facta  sunt  in  voluntate  Dei 
sapientissima  atque  justissima.  Deinde  vero  suo  tempore  ventum  est  et 
quotidie  venitur  ad  aeternorum  istorum  decretorum  executionem.  Ac  juxta 
ordinem  naturae  quod  primum  fuit  in  intentione  (ut  solent  loqui  omnes 
scholae),  illud  postea  ultimum  fuit  et  est  in  executione.  Et  contra,  quod 
posterius  fuit  in  intentione ; illud  primum  in  executione  fuisse  videmus.” 

2 Amesius,  “ Theologia,”  lib.  i.,  cap.  vii.,  § 18  : “ Si  enim  decretum  aliquod 
Dei  penderet  proprie  ex  ejusmodi  praevisione,  turn  Dei  Idea  adveniret 
ei  aliunde,  quod  ej us  naturae  haudquaquam  convenit.”  . . . §38:  “ Hinc 
voluntas  Dei  est  prima  causa  rerum.  Per  voluntatem  tuam  sunt  et  creata 
sunt  (Apoc.  iv.  1 1).  Voluntas  autem  Dei  ut  velit  operari  ad  extra,  non 
praesupponit  bonitatem  objecti,  sed  volendo  ponit  et  facit.” 

® Calvin,  “ Inst.,”  iii.,  cap.  xxiii.,  § 8 : “Voluntas  Dei  est  rerum  necessitas.” 

* Turretinus,  “ Instit.  Theol.  Elenc.,”  loc.  vi.,  quaes,  iii.,  § i : “ Nos  vero 


ANTICIPATIONS  OF  SPINOZA. 


165 


now  explicit  principle,  that  His  will  always  was  as  His  nature 
was,  that  if  His  choices  were  with  a view  to  His  ends.  His 
ends  and  therefore  His  choices  alike  depended  on  His  nature, 
and  could  not  but  be  in  harmony  with  it  He  was  free  in  the 
Edwardian  sense — z.e.,  He  had  not  so  much  freedom  of  volition 
as  freedom  of  action  and  execution ; all  His  choices  were 
necessary,  but  all  His  acts  were  free. 

This  affinity  with  Pantheism  in  fundamental  idea  is  often 
represented  by  agreement  in  what  seem  matters  of  detail. 
In  Spinoza’s  system  will  and  understanding — voluntas  and 
intellectus — were  one  and  the  same,  and  the  higher  Calvinism 
always  tended  to  identify  the  intellect  with  the  will,  fore- 
knowledge with  foreordination.  To  both  the  highest  good 
was  the  knowledge  of  God,  and  clear  knowledge  became 
intellectual  love  of  Him,  which  was  eternal  beatitude.  Both 
had  at  root  the  same  idea  of  sin  and  of  virtue,  both  had  the 
same  sense  of  the  awful  majesty  of  order  or  law,  both  came 
to  the  individual  through  the  universal,  and  read  all  things 
phenomenal  in  the  light  of  the  one  substance  or  the  alone 
efficient  will.  Calvin  may  be  said  to  have  anticipated 
Spinoza  in  his  notion  of  God  as  causa  immaziens}  Spinoza, 

omnia  sine  exceptione,  sive  caelestia,  sive  sublunaria,  sive  magna,  sive 
parva,  sive  bona,  sive  mala,  sive  necessaria  et  naturalia,  sive  libera  et 
contingentia  Providentiae  divinae  subesse  credimus,  ut  nihil  in  rerum  natura 
possit  dari  vel  evenire,  quod  ab  ea  non  pendeat.” 

^ Calvin,  “ Instit.  Christ.  Relig.,”  lib.  i.,  cap.  v.,  § 5 : “ Fateor  quidem  pie 
hoc  posse  dici,  modo  a pio  animo  proficiscatur,  naturam  esse  Deum.”  . . . 
Cap.  xiii.,  § 14 : “ Spiritus  divinus,  qui,  ubique  diffusus,  omnia  sustinet, 
vegetal  et  vivificat  in  caelo  et  in  terra.”  One  of  the  most  distinctive  features 
of  the  Reformed  theology  was  the  emphasis  it  laid  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
prceseziiia  essentialis^  which  it  applied  alike  to  man  and  nature.  Thus 
Turretinus,  loc.  iii.  quaes,  i.,  § 13:  “Homo  non  eget  longe  corrogatis 
testibus,  vel  ut  exeat  ex  seipso,  cum  habeat  in  sinu  suo  domesticum 
hujusce  veritatis  Doctorem.  . . . Flaec  sane  imago  prototypum  suum  refert, 
et  nemo  est,  qui,  si  attendere  velit,  Deum  in  se  praesentem  non  tantum 
audiat  et  videat,  sed  etiam  quodammodo  tangat  et  palpet.”  And  so  also 
Zanchius,  lib.  ii.,  cap.  vii.,  quaes,  iii.,  § iii.  4 : “ Sunt  autem  omnia  creata  a 
Deo  non  alia  quam  suae  essentiae  virtute.  Quicquid  igitur  in  rebus 
creatis  a Deo  positum  est,  similitude  aliqua  essentiae  Dei  est  ; siciit  et 


THE  DESTINIES  OF  MEN 


1 66 

in  his  definition  of  freedom,  “ Ea  res  libera  dicetur,  quae  ex 
sola  suae  naturae  necessitate  existit,  et  a se  sola  ad  agendum 
detcrminatur,”  and  in  his  application  of  it  to  God,  “ Deus 
ex  solis  suae  naturae  legibus  et  a nemine  coactus  agit,’*  ^ 
may  be  said  to  have  perfected  and  reduced  to  philosophical 
consistency  the  Calvinistic  conception  of  Deity.^ 

But  the  higher  Calvinism  was  not  an  abstract  system  ; it 
was  developed  into  an  applied  theology — i.e.y  it  was  made 
to  explain  the  history  of  man  with  all  its  anomalies,  alike 
as  regards  evil  and  good.  Its  high  speculative  idea  was 
boldly  explicated  and  articulated  into  a system  that  seemed 
at  once  to  represent  and  explain  all  human  experience. 
Life  was  complex,  man  was  varied,  the  home  of  evil  and 
good  ; virtue  and  vice,  holiness  and  sin,  lived  and  con- 
tended in  the  individual,  while  on  the  broader  field  of 

Esse  creaturarum,  similitudo  quaedam  est  Esse  Dei ; et  vita  creaturarum, 
imago  quaedam  est  vitae  Dei.”  . . . Lib.  ii.,  cap.  vi.,  quaes,  ii.,  thesis  i.  : 
“ Deus  autem  inest  rebus  a se  conditis,  ut  causa  duntaxat  efficiens,  con- 
servaus,  movens.  . . . Quare  sic  propositionem  intelligamus,  Deum  vere  et 
reapse  in  singulis  esse  rebus  sua  essentia,  et  ex  consequenti,  sua  potentia 
ac  virtute,  praesentem.” 

^ “ Ethices,”  pars  i.,  def.  vii.,  propos.  xvii. 

2 Zanchius,  lib.  iii.,  cap.  iv.,  quaes,  vi.,  thesis,  § i:  “ Quando  igitur 
dicimus,  Deum,  quae  de  seipso  vult,  ea  necessario  velle  : de  necessario 
absolute  et  simpliciter  dicto,  intelligimus;  quod  nullo  scilicet  modo  se 
aliter  habere  potest  suapte  natura.  Fieri  enim  simpliciter  et  absolute  non 
potest,  neque  potuit  unquam  ; quin  Deus  seipsum,  suam  bonitatem  et 
gloriam  velit.  Neque  hoc  quidpiam  detrahit  de  liberrima  ipsius  voluntate 
aut  omnipotentia.  Non  enim  est  haec  necessitas  coactionis,  sed  naturae; 
sicut  etiam  cum  dicimus  natura  bonum  esse,  et  natura  genuisse  filium.” 
Burmann,  a Dutch  theologian,  who  was  born  the  same  year  as  Spinoza, 
and  died  two  years  after  him  in  his  ‘‘Synopsis  Theologiae,”  published  six 
years  before  the  “ Ethics,”  thus  states  his  idea  of  the  organic  unity  of  the 
universe,  vol.  i.,  p.  146:  “Nam  cum  tota  rerum  natura  non  sit  nisi  unicum 
ens  adeoque  homo  sit  pars  naturae,  sequitur,”  etc.  And  he  holds  that  if 
only  we  knew  things  as  they  are  we  should  discover  their  necessity  (zbid., 
p.  145) : “ Si  homines  dare  totum  naturae  ordinem  intelligerent,  omnia 
aeque  necessaria  reperirent,  ac  ilia  quae  in  mathesi  tractantur.”  The  ante- 
cedents of  Spinoza  in  the  Reformed  theology — i.e.,  the  theology  which  was 
in  his  day  actively  and  daringly  speculative  in  Holland — have  not  been 
examined  as  they  deserve.  The  field  would  repay  the  diligent  inquirer. 


AND  THE  DECREES  OF  GOD.  167 

history  they  struggled  for  the  possession  of  the  race.  Yet 
where  a Divine  will  reigned  these  anomalies  could  not  be 
conceived  as  the  result  of  accident.  “ Chance,”  indeed,  is 
but  a term  denotive  of  ignorance  ; the  man  who  uses  it 
confesses  that  he  can  find  no  reason  in  the  universe,  and  all 
that  he  knows  is  that  things  fall  out — he  knows  not  how. 
But  .this  is  a confession  that  can  never  be  made  by  the  man 
who  believes  in  a Divine  will  efficient  in  all  and  over  and 
through  all.  He  is  bound  to  read  all  anomalies  through  the 
all-ordering  will,  and  ordered  anomalies  are  anomalies  no 
more.  Hence  when  the  high  Calvinist  saw  that  this  world 
though  made  by  God,  was  possessed  by  sin,  he  said  : “ The 
sin  was  ordained  not  as  an  end,  but  as  a means  ; it  is  here 
because  there  was  something  God  could  not  accomplish 
without  it ; what  is  first  in  the  Divine  intention  is  last  in 
the  Divine  execution  ; find  out  this  first  which  is  to  be  the 
last,  and  sin  will  be  explained.”  This  thing  first  intended 
and  last  executed  was  a necessity  to  the  Divine  nature,  and 
could  be  nothing  less  than  the  manifestation  of  the  godliest 
qualities  of  God,  the  attributes  which  were  His  glory  and 
marked  Him  off  from  all  created  and  dependent  being ; and 
so  it  was  said  : “ The  most  essential  attributes  of  God  are 
holiness — or  justice,  which  is  but  holiness  in  exercise — and 
grace  ; and  His  most  necessary  function  is  sovereignty  ; but  He 
can  be  seen  to  be  a holy  and  gracious  Sovereign  only  provided 
there  are  subjects  to  whom  He  can  show  the  awful  severity 
of  His  holiness  and  the  sweet  and  saving  condescension  of 
His  grace.  In  order  to  the  exercise  of  these  attributes  there 
must  be  men  to  be  judged  and  men  to  be  saved  ; and  in 
order  to  the  being  of  such  men  there  must  be  sin.  So  God 
ordains  it  as  a means,  not  as  an  end  ; not  for  its  own  sake, 
but  as  a condition  necessary  to  the  acts  that  shall  most 
manifest  His  glory.”  Then  he  saw  that  some  men  were 
good  in  spite  of  most  evil  conditions,  some  were  bad  though 
their  conditions  were  good,  and  so  he  said  : “ This  evil  and 


i68 


THE  SUBLAPSARIAN  CALVINISM 


this  good  are  of  God,  and  not  of  the  will  of  man ; repro- 
bation and  election  are  both  of  Him,  happen  as  He  has 
predestined.”  Then,  as  the  reasons  for  this  choice  could  not 
be  placed  in  man  without  conditioning  and  so  cancelling  the 
absoluteness  of  the  Divine  will,  without,  too,  finding  motives 
outside  God  which  would  deprive  Him  of  the  freedom  and 
spontaneity  of  His  action,  it  was  said  : “ Election  is  uncon- 
ditional ; there  is  and  can  be  nothing  in  the  creature  which 
moves  God  to  the  exercise  of  His  grace  ; He  saves  because 
it  becomes  His  mercy,  and  He  judges  because  it  becomes 
His  justice,  though,  of  course,  neither  were  possible  without 
sin.”  The  system  was  thus  one  where  the  sole  efficient 
factor  of  all  things — therefore  the  one  abiding  and  causal 
reality — was  the  Divine  will.  It  was  audaciously,  yet  with 
fear  and  awe,  worked  out  in  the  terms  of  Divine  sovereignty 
and  human  subjection,  of  sin  and  salvation,  election  and 
reprobation,  into  a theology  which  conceived  and  represented 
the  universe,  all  beings  and  all  the  phenomena  and  accidents 
of  being  as  but  forms  under  which  the  eternal  will  realized 
itself.  Man  became,  if  not  a mode  of  the  infinite  substance, 
yet  a mode  or  vehicle  of  the  infinite  will,  and  the  universalized 
Divine  will  is  an  even  more  decisive  and  comprehensive 
Pantheism  than  the  universalized  Divine  substance. 

2.  But  there  was  a lower  Calvinism — the  sublapsarian.^  This, 
by  placing  the  decrees  of  God  below  the  Fall  instead  of  above 
it,  escaped  some  of  the  diffieulties  of  the  supralapsarian,  but 
only  to  encounter  those  proper  to  a less  thorough  and  con- 
sistent system.  The  Divine  will  was  called  into  action  because 
of  the  conditions  created  by  the  Fall ; but  while  sin  had  thus  a 
less  intelligible  and,  as  it  were,  justified  being,  the  lot  of  the 
sinner  seemed  at  once  harder  and  more  inexplicable.  The 

1 The  greatest  of  the  Reformed  divines  were  supralapsarian ; but  it 
never  received  confessional  expression,  not  even  in  the  “Formula  Consensus 
Helvetica.”  In  the  Westminster  Confession  the  general  outline  is  supra- 
lapsariaii — i.e.^  the  decrees  come  in  before  both  the  Creation  and  the  Fall  ; 
but  the  particular  statement  is  sublapsarian. 


A LESS  CONSISTENT  SYSTEM. 


169 


Fall  became  more  of  an  accident,  and  so  sin  lost  much  of 
its  awfulness,  the  character  it  had  as  an  evil  made  necessary 
by  the  infinite  ends.  The  fate  of  the  reprobate  appeared  all 
the  darker  because  God  took  occasion  to  act  as  He  did  from 
the  wilfulness  of  a single,  even  though  he  were  a representative, 
man.  The  very  degree  in  which  evil  in  its  origin  ceased  to 
be  necessary  was  the  measure  of  the  Divine  injustice  in 
dealing  with  it  as  if  it  were  an  infinite  offence.  And  so  the 
modification  increased  rather  than  lessened  the  openness  of 
the  system  to  criticism.  This  criticism  was  due  to  a double 
reaction  against  Calvinism  within  the  Reformed  Church,  the 
one  assailing  it  through  the  idea  of  man,  the  other  through 
the  conception  of  God.  The  former  was  the  Arminian,  the 
latter  the  Socinian  movement. 

A.  The  Arminian  criticism  of  Calvinism  rested  on  two  main 
ideas — that  of  equity  and  that  of  man.^  The  former  made 

* The  special  points  on  which  Calvinist  and  Arminian  differed  were  five  : 
(a)  Predestination  : The  Calvinist  held  it  to  be  absolute  and  unconditional 
— i.e.,  the  decree  to  elect  was  without  foresight  of  faith  or  good  works,  an 
act  of  the  Divine  will  nnmotived  from  without,  moved  only  from  within, 
ex  gratia  ox  ex  necessitate  Jiaturce  divince  \ while  the  decree  to  reprobate 
had  as  condition  no  special  demerit  of  the  sinner,  but  was  just  because  of 
sin,  though  it  was  a sin  that  as  common  involved  all  in  equal  guilt  and  liability 
to  penalty.  But  the  Arminian  held  the  decree,  whether  elective  or  repro- 
batory,  to  be  throughout  conditional — i.e.i  election  depended  on  foreseen 
faith,  reprobation  on  foreknown  unbelief.  (jS)  Atonement ; The  Calvinist 
held  that  it  was  strictly  limited,  made  for  the  elect  alone,  and  that  it  so  satisfied 
Divine  justice  on  their  behalf  that  they  could  not  but  be  saved  ; for  were 
any  lost,  then  the  penalty  of  sin  would  be  twice  inflicted — once  on  Christ, 
and  again  on  the  sinner  for  whom  He  died, — a thing  impossible  to  Divine 
justice.  But  the  Arminian  held  the  Atonement  to  be  universal,  designed 
and  accomplished  for  all,  making  the  salvation  of  no  man  actual,  but  the 
salvation  of  all  men  possible,  the  result  being  conditional  on  faith, 
(y)  Depravity:  The  Calvinist  held  it  to  be  total,  involving  bondage  of  the 
will  and  inability  to  all  spiritual  good  ; but  the  Arminian  considered  it 
as  a bias  or  tendency,  which  yet  left  the  will  free,  and  so  the  man  respon- 
sible for  his  own  destiny,  belief,  or  unbelief.  (8)  Conversion,  or  the  work 
of  the  Holy  Spirit : The  Calvinist  believed  grace  to  be  irresistible,  the 
calling  of  God  to  be  both  effectual  and  efficacious,  due  to  the  immediate 
operation  of  the  Spirit  on  the  soul ; but  the  Arminian  maintained  the 
Divine  action  to  be  mediate,  through  the  truth,  and  so  to  be  moral  and 


70 


THE  ARMINIAN  CRITICISM  BASED  ON 


moral  principles  or  laws  condition  the  Divine  will ; the  latter 
set  physical  limits  to  the  Divine  action.  The  Calvinistic  idea 
of  justice  w'as  based  altogether  on  the  supremacy  or  rights  of 
God,  but  the  Arminian  so  construed  justice  as  to  place  the 
rights  of  man  over  against  God’s.  Sin  had  not  turned  man 
into  a mere  vessel  of  wrath  or  of  mercy,  a creature  who  was 
damned  because  of  guilt  he  had  inherited,  or  saved  by  a grace 
that  acted  without  reason  or  any  regard  to  foreseen  faith  or 
good  works.  The  worst  criminal  had  his  rights,  especially 
the  right  to  a fair  trial  before  a fair  tribunal  ; and  these  rights 
did  not  cease  simply  because  the  judge  was  God,  and  the 
accused,  or  even  the  condemned,  was  man.  The  Creator 
owed  something  to  the  creature  He  had  formed,  and  these 
obligations  did  not  cease  because  the  first  man  had  sinned. 
In  a perfectly  real  sense  sin  had  only  increased  the  duty  of 
God  to  be  just.  If  original  sin  was  what  Augustine  had  stated 
it  to  be,  and  what  the  Calvinist  maintained  it  was,  then  it 

persuasive  as  distinguished  from  physical  and  necessitating,  (e)  Per- 
severance of  the  saints : The  Calvinist  held  their  indefectibility,  the  men 
unconditionally  elected,  absolutely  purchased  by  the  death  of  Christ,  and 
irresistibly  called  out  of  their  depraved  and  lost  estate  by  the  direct  opera- 
tion of  the  Holy  Spirit,  could  not  possibly  fall  from  grace  ; but  the  Arminian 
maintained  their  defectibility,  as  indeed  on  the  basis  of  his  other  doctrines 
he  could  not  but  do.  The  Arminian  positions  contradicted  the  sublapsarian 
quite  as  much  as  the  supralapsarian  position,  as  each  was  alike  rigid  so  far 
as  concerned  the  destiny  of  man.  The  exposition  in  the  text  is  not  con- 
cerned with  the  special  doctrines  of  the  two  systems,  but  with  their 
underlying  and  determinative  ideas. 

In  the  history  of  the  two  systems  there  are  many  instructive  features. 
On  the  Calvinistic  side  we  have  more  of  the  speculative  and  scholastic 
spirit,  the  intellect  is  deductive  and  architectonic ; on  the  Arminian  the 
spirit  is  more  humanistic  and  literary.  The  great  names  in  Calvinism — 
Calvin,  Zanchius,  Gomarus,  Twisse,  Rutherford — are  all  men  of  specula- 
tive genius  ; but  the  great  names  in  Arminianism — Grotius,  Episcopius, 
Brandt,  Limborch,  Le  Clerc — are  all  men  of  literary  faculty  and  humanistic 
temper.  In  the  realm  of  opinion  Calvinism  did  not  spontaneously  incline 
to  toleration,  but  Arminianism  did.  Some  of  its  earliest  representatives 
were  among  the  earliest  advocates  of  religious  freedom.  There  seems  a 
curious  reversal  of  this,  the  natural  order,  in  their  relations  in  England, 
where  the  Arminians  were  Laudian,  with  the  notable  exception  of  irre- 
pressible John  Goodwin.  Why  this  was  so  is  discussed  below. 


THE  IDEAS  OF  EQUITY  AND  OF  MAN.  171 

would  be  truer  to  name  it  the  radical  wrong  of  man.  The 
race  had  not  been  consulted  by  the  first  man  ; he  was  not 
their  representative,  for  they  had  no  will  in  his  appointment 
and  no  veto  on  his  acts.  And  so  by  every  law  of  justice  they 
ought  to  be  pitied  rather  than  blamed  for  what  they  had 
suffered  in  consequence  of  him  ; and  it  was  impossible  to  con- 
ceive anything  nearer  infinite  injustice  than  allowing  it  to 
involve  millions  of  men  in  every  age  and  of  every  age  in 
eternal  death.  The  criticism  was  irresistible  ; the  moment 
the  idea  of  equity  was  admitted  to  a place  in  the  relations  of 
God  to  man,  the  old  absolute  unconditionalism  became  un- 
tenable. If  justice  reigned,  it  meant  that  God  must  be  just  to 
man,  even  though  man  was  disobedient  to  God  ; and  there 
was  no  justice  in  condemnation  for  a sin  which  came  without 
personal  responsibility,  or  in  a salvation  which  had  no  regard 
to  personal  will  or  choice. 

The  correlate  to  the  idea  of  equity  was  the  idea  of  man. 
He  was  free  and  rational ; sin  had  not  destroyed  either  his 
reason  or  his  freedom.  By  the  one  he  had  the  ability  to 
believe,  by  the  other  the  ability  to  choose  ; and  in  justice 
God  must  deal  with  him  as  one  possessed  of  such  abilities. 
Thus  the  free  will  of  man  came  to  condition  the  absolute  will 
of  God.  In  the  realm  of  nature  His  omnipotence  and  all  His 
physical  attributes  ruled,  but  in  the  realm  of  mind  His  love 
and  moral  attributes  governed.  The  destiny  of  man  could 
not  then  be  deduced  by  a logical  process  from  the  premiss 
that  God  is  the  sovereign  will  which  can  do  as  it  chooses  ; for 
He  has  chosen  to  make  man  free  and  responsible,  and  His 
conduct  to  man  will  be  conditioned  by  the  nature  He  has 
made.  If  He  has  willed  to  create  man  moral,  it  is  certain  that 
He  will  not  deal  with  him  as  if  he  were  merely  physical.  But 
if  Creator  and  creature  are  alike  moral  in  character,  it  follows 
that  necessitating  action  on  the  one  side  and  necessitated  on 
the  other  are  both  excluded.  By  His  own  voluntary  act 
God  has  limited  the  range  and  exercise  of  His  physical 


1/2 


THE  SOCINIAN  CRITICISM 


attributes,  and  so  the  terms  which  express  His  relations  to 
man  must  be  those  of  reason  and  freedom,  not  those  of  will 
and  compulsion. 

B.  But  the  Socinian  criticism  struck  the  Reformed  theology 
in  a still  more  vital  point — viz.,  the  doctrines  of  the  Godhead 
and  Atonement.  These  represented  the  agencies  and  means 
by  which  the  gracious  became  the  redemptive  will,  at  once 
efficacious  in  its  action  and  limited  in  its  extent.  This  was 
accomplished  by  incorporating  the  forensic  ideas  of  Western 
with  the  metaphysical  ideas  of  Eastern  theology  ; but  it 
was  so  done  that  while  the  metaphysical  unity  of  the 
Godhead  was  preserved  the  ethical  was  not.  If  God  was 
conceived  as  Creator,  His  will  was  simple  and  absolute  ; 
but  if  as  Redeemer,  it  became  complex  and  conditioned. 
But  because  of  the  very  principles  from  which  the  theology 
started,  the  conditioned  action  must  still  remain  God’s — 
be  a transaction  within  the  Godhead,  carried  out  by  and 
between  the  Divine  Persons.  His  justice  demanded  the 
punishment  of  the  guilty ; His  mercy  desired  their  salva- 
tion ; but  this  could  be  only  on  terms  which  satisfied  the 
justice.  The  Godhead  was  made  to  represent  how  this  hap- 
pened ; the  Father  became,  as  it  were,  hypostatized  justice, 
the  Son  hypostatized  mercy,  and  the  Spirit  their  joint  or 
resultant  will.  These  united  in  a sort  of  pretcmporal  cove- 
nant. The  justice  of  the  F'ather  was  to  be  upheld  by  the 
Son  becoming  man  and  bearing  all  the  penalty  of  all  the  sins 
of  those  men  whom  the  eternal  council  had  decreed  to  save. 
Of  these  no  one  could  be  lost,  since  the  penalty  could  not 
be  twice  exacted,  and  the  Father  once  satisfied  would  become 
unjust  were  He  to  allow  the  man  to  be  lost.  The  theology 
was  an  absolute  Monotheism,  but  this  soteriology  seemed  to 
involve  an  ethical  Tritheism.  So  the  Socinian  criticism  con- 
centrated itself  on  two  points — the  unreality  of  the  hypostatized 
distinctions  and  of  the  transactions  they  were  made  to  repre- 
sent. The  will  of  God  was  one,  and  His  relation  to  man 


THEOLOGICAL  AND  SOTERIOLOGICAL. 


73 


was  one.  Three  dispositions  or  wills  representing  different 
moral  tempers  and  attitudes  within  the  Godhead  were  fatal 
even  more  to  the  ethical  than  to  the  metaphysical  unity  of 
God  ; and  the  Son,  as  more  benevolent  than  the  severe  and 
vindicative  Father,  was  the  more  Godlike.  But  apart  from 
the  wills,  what  was  the  use  of  this  transaction  conducted 
within  the  eternal  council  ? If  God  was  willing  to  forgive  the 
guilty,  why  should  He  not?  Who  could  dispute  His  will?  If 
man  could  forgive  a penitent  son,  why  could  not  God  ? And 
what  was  Christ  but  an  example  of  the  good  man  submissive 
to  God  and  a pledge  of  His  readiness  to  forgive? 

This  Socinian  criticism  was  of  value  as  a severe  and 
mordant  analysis  of  a formal  and  scholastic  theology,  espe- 
cially as  it  appeared  in  certain  vernacular  versions  ; but  it 
had  little  independent  and  no  constructive  worth.  It  often 
succeeded  in  criticism  because  it  failed  in  insight,  and  it 
tvas  too  intent  on  contemporary  polemics  to  be  either  a 
speculative  or  historical  interpretation  of  Christianity.  Nega- 
tive criticism  has  its  place  in  history,  and  it  is  a place  not 
to  be  despised  ; its  function  is  to  remove  the  partial  or  the 
perverted,  that  room  may  be  made  for  the  more  adequate 
and  the  truer.  The  Socinian  criticism  simply  applied  to  the 
profoundest  mysteries  of  theology  our  every-day  logical  and 
ethical  categories.  It  represented  the  play  of  the  prosaic 
understanding  in  the  region  of  the  speculative  imagination. 
But  for  this  very  reason  it  was  effective,  and  compelled  in 
the  system  it  criticized  a twofold  modification,  one  in  the 
theology,  the  other  in  the  soteriology.  The  first  was  effected 
by  the  Subterlapsarian  School,  which  had  hypothetical  uni- 
versalism  as  its  note.^  The  will  of  God  was  a will  of  universal 

1 This  was  the  school  of  Saumur,  and  no  school  of  the  seventeenth 
century  can  exhibit  a roll  of  more  distinguished  names.  It  took  its  name 
from  the  Protestant  academy  or  university  which  the  wisdom  and  munifi- 
cence of  Du  Plessis-Mornay  had  founded  at  Saumur,  and  so  long  as  it 
was  allowed  to  live  it  served  well  the  one  and  common  cause  of  religion 
and  letters  and  liberty.  Its  most  distinguished  representatives  were  John 


174 


HYPOTHETICAL  UNIVERSALISM 


benevolence  ; the  Godhead  desired  the  salvation  of  all  men, 
and  the  death  of  Christ  was  adequate  to  this  desire,  atoned 
for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world.  But  in  order  that  it  might 
not  be  without  effect,  the  salvation  of  the  elect  was  decreed  ; 
theirs,  therefore,  was  necessary,  other  men’s  was.  only  made 
possible.  But  to  this  theory  the  old  doctrine  of  atonement 
did  not  correspond.  According  to  it,  if  Christ  made  absolute 
satisfaction  for  the  sins  of  any  man,  the  man  could  not  be 
lost ; if  the  satisfaction  was  less  than  absolute,  the  man 
could  not  be  saved.  Hence,  if  the  Atonement  was  to  be 
either  really  or  hypothetically  universal,  some  other  idea  of 
its  nature  must  be  formed.  This  other  idea  represents  the 
modification  in  soteriology,  and  came  from  the  ranks  of  the 
Arminians  ; its  author  was  the  famous  jurist  Grotius,  and  its 
character  juridical,  but  based  on  the  notion  of  political  as 
distinguished  from  absolute  justice.  In  effect,  it  replied  to 
the  Socinian  by  saying, — We  do  not  live  under  a system 
of  rigorous  and  absolute  justice,  which  would  make  all  atone- 
ment impossible  ; or  a system  of  private  benevolence,  which 
would  make  one  unnecessary  ; but  of  public  justice,  where 
it  may  be  expedient.  God  is  not  an  individual,  a being 
with  purely  personal  relations  ; He  is  a Governor,  He  governs 

Cameron,  one  of  several  Scotchmen  who  entered  the  service  of  the  French 
Protestant  Church  (in  the  Faculty  of  Saumur  alone  there  were  two  besides 
Cameron — Mark  Duncan  and  William  Geddes),  and  though  he  was  recalled 
and  made  Principal  of  Glasgow  University,  yet  he  preferred  the  freedom 
of  the  French  to  the  bondage  of  the  Scotch  Church  ; Moses  Amyraut, 
from  whom  the  system  got  its  name  of  Amyraldism  ; and  Louis  Cappel 
(Ludovicus  Cappellus,  second  of  the  name).  The  last  named  was  member 
of  an  illustrious  Huguenot  family  which  may  be  said  to  have  served  their 
religion  by  the  sacrifice  of  all  their  worldly  goods  and  the  devotion  of 
their  intellect  and  learning.  This  Louis  was  one  of  the  most  famous 
Biblical  scholars  in  the  heroic  age  of  sacred  scholarship.  It  is  worthy  of 
mention  that  on  the  recommendation  of  Cameron  he  came  to  Oxford  and 
studied  Arabic.  While  Amyraut  represented  Saumur  in  its  freer  attitude 
to  doctrine,  Cappel  represented  its  freer  attitude  to  the  Scriptures,  and 
their  combined  positions  occasioned  a famous  counterblast,  the  “ Formula 
Consensus  Helvetica,”  which  forms  the  high-water  mark  of  the  Reformed 
Church  in  its  doctrine  both  of  the  Decrees  and  the  Scriptures. 


AND  GROTIAN  JURISPRUDENCE. 


175 


a very  mixed  universe,  and  He  must  so  govern  it  as  to 
uphold  order,  which  means  the  greatest  good  to  the  greatest 
number.  In  order  to  this  He  must  cause  law  to  be  re- 
spected both  among  those  who  have  and  those  who  have 
not  broken  it,  and  a law  unenforced  by  sanction  and  penalty 
is  not  respected  ; it  is  really,  if  not  formally,  repealed.  But 
it  is  not  necessary  that  He  enforce  the  penalty  in  the  express 
form  and  to  the  last  word  threatened,  for  a threatening  differs 
from  a promise  thus : the  one  must  be  fulfilled  to  the  letter, 
the  other  need  not.  The  infliction  of  penalty  is  therefore  a 
necessity,  but  its  form  and  degree  may  vary  The  law  may 
be  relaxed  ; the  Governor  may  forgive  for  a consideration. 
The  Atonement  is  such  a consideration  ; because  of  it  God 
can  remit  the  penalty,  and  save  the  sinner  from  the  law. 
But  as  there  is  no  absolute  satisfaction,  only  a ground  for 
relaxation,  the  result  is  conditional,  the  salvation  of  all  men 
is  made  possible,  of  no  man  necessary.  Only  because  of 
faith  does  the  relaxed  law  acquit,  God  forgive,  and  the  man 
find  acceptance. 

The  modern  evangelical  theology  may  be  described  as  a 
fusion  of  the  Saumur  hypothetical  universalism  with  the 
Grotian  jurisprudence.  It  built  on  the  sovereignty  of  God  ; 
but  its  sovereign  was  no  longer  the  absolute  of  the  higher 
Calvinism,  where  the  power  was  too  sole  to  be  responsible 
and  too  supreme  to  be  qualified,  but  rather  the  limited 
Monarch  of  a constitutional  universe,  where  the  justice  is 
public  and  the  benevolence  is  universal.  The  defects  of 
theory  are  obvious  ; it  is  the  interpretation  of  God  and  His 
highest  act  in  the  terms  of  a forensic  school  jealous  for  the 
vindication  of  law  and  the  maintenance  of  order.^  It  is  a 
freer  and  less  rigid  law  than  Tertullian’s  or  Augustine’s  ; it 
is  not  so  calculating  and  mercantile  as  Anselm’s  ; it  is  the 
law  of  a free  and  constituted  state,  benevolently  administered  ; 
it  is  the  law  of  the  Dutch  Republic  or  the  English  Common- 
1 See  supra,  pp.  14-17. 


176 


THE  ENGLISH  CHURCH  : ITS  SCHOOLS 


wealth,  where  the  law  js  king,  not  the  law  of  an  empire  or  an 
autocracy  where  the  king  is  the  law.  But  it  is  still  law,  God, 
if  one  may  say  so,  translated  into  the  terms  of  a lawyer^s  law, 
not  law  penetrated,  transfigured,  glorified,  by  the  indwelling 
of  God.  Yet  by  this  very  defect  the  theory  illustrated  the 
truth  that  every  change  in  Reformed  theology  has  but  ex- 
pressed some  modification  in  the  theistic  conception.  And 
here  it  also  expressed  in  a form  now  more,  now  less  forensic, 
the  intense  conviction  that  to  man  the  greatest  possible  evil 
was  to  be  alienated  from  God,  and  the  greatest  possible  good 
to  be  reconciled  to  Him.  In  spite  of  its  defects  the  theology 
helped  to  make  so  many  lives  holy  that  we  may  be  sure 
that  it  had  a message  from  God  to  man. 

§ V. — Theology  and  the  English  Church. 

English  theology  must  be  construed  through  the  schools 
of  the  English  Church.  In  that  Church  there  have  always 
been  parties  as  strictly  institutional  as  the  Roman,  and  parties 
as  strictly  theological  as  the  Lutheran  and  the  Reformed  ; 
and  though  their  coexistence  has  often  modified  their  action, 
yet  it  has  as  often  sharpened  their  doctrinal  antitheses. 
The  institutional  school  exists  to-day  in  two  sections — the 
High  Church  and  the  Broad  ; the  theological  is  also  repre- 
sented by  two  distinct  types — one  old  and  historical,  the 
Puritan,  the  other  modern  and  living,  the  Evangelical.^  The 
two  former  have  this  as  their  generic  characteristic  : — they 
emphasize  the  institution,  the  episcopal  body  as  now  con- 
stituted and  now  existing  within  the  English  State  and  under 
its  sanction.  But  they  are  distinguished  thus : — the  High 
Church  emphasizes  the  ecclesiastical  and  traditional  elements 
in  the  institution,  but  the  Broad  Church  emphasizes  the  civil 
and  national.  What  justification  by  faith  was  to  Luther 
the  episcopate  is  to  the  High  Anglican,  the  article  of  a 


* Supra,  pp.  9,  10. 


THEOLOGICAL  AND  INSTITUTIONAL. 


177 


standing  and  falling  Church ; while  in  contrast  to  Calvin, 
who  held  the  State  to  be  but  the  Church  in  its  civil  aspect, 
the  Broad  Anglican  holds  the  Church  to  be  the  State  in  its 
religious  character.  The  High  Anglican  so  emphasizes  all 
in  the  polity  that  distinguishes  the  Church  from  the  State, 
especially  the  episcopate  and  the  episcopal  succession,  with 
the  sacraments  or  the  articles  of  adminstration,  as  to  affirm, 
or  tend  to  affirm,  if  not  their  common  and  mutual  independ- 
ence, at  least  the  independence  of  the  Church  on  the  State. 
But  the  Broad  Anglican  so  loves  not  so  much  to  minimize 
their  differences  as  to  discover  their  affinities  and  coin- 
cidence that  he  now  and  then  almost  loses  in  the  State  the 
separate  being  of  the  Church.  Yet  widely  as  they  seem  to 
differ  their  generic  characteristic  indicates  agreement  in 
fundamental  idea — in  each  case  the  Church  is  political,  and 
is  by  virtue  of  its  political  qualities.  And  this  agreement 
has  its  historical  interest  and  evidence.  The  same  “ Eccle- 
siastical Polity  ” to  which  the  Broad  Churchman  appeals,  is 
one  of  the  High  Churchman’s  most  loved  authorities  ; and 
the  old  High  Church  was  as  civil  in  its  basis  as  is  the 
modern  Broad.  The  ultimate  Divine  right  with  Laud,  the 
ground  of  all  his  policy,  the  warrant  of  all  his  action,  was 
the  King’s ; and  it  was  by  the  same  party  that  the  headship 
of  the  second  Charles  over  the  Church,  with  all  the  baneful 
tyrannies  that  flowed  from  it,  was  most  broadly  stated, 
fulsomely  praised,  and  strenuously  defended.  The  Act  of 
Uniformity  is  a monument  of  the  identity  of  the  historical 
High  Church  with  the  Broad  as  regards  civil  or  political 
doctrine.  Their  distinctive  features  are,  because  of  this 
agreement  in  fundamental  idea,  largely  due  to  developments 
in  civil  politics.  The  modern  Broad  Church  is  a theory  as 
to  how  the  old  connection  of  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
states  may  be  maintained  under  a democracy ; the  modern 
High  Church  is  a theory  as  to  how  the  Church  may,  while 
living  within  and  under  a democracy,  yet  be  independent  of 


12 


178  HIGH  CHURCH  AND  BROAD: 

it.  What  occasioned  the  rise  of  the  two  were  the  same 
events  differently  regarded  ; love  of  the  liberalism  which 
had  gained  the  ascendency  in  the  State  made  the  Broad 
Church,  fear  of  it  created  the  High.  Both  parties  may  have 
since  then  learned  to  temper  their  feelings,  and,  as  a con- 
sequence, their  judgments,  with  wisdom  or  discretion  ; but 
of  the  historical  fact  there  can  be  no  doubt.  And  the  fact 
is  significant  of  the  essentially  political  character  of  both 
ideals. 

The  institutional  character  of  these  two  schools  is  ex- 
pressed in  their  respective  attitudes  to  theology,  and  their 
theologies  repeat  and  reflect  the  differences  of  their  institu- 
tional ideals.  The  theology  of  the  Broad  Church  represented 
the  revolt  against  the  past,  the  attempt  not  to  dishonour  it, 
but  to  loosen  the  bonds  with  which  it  bound  the  present  ; 
but  the  theology  of  the  High  Church  represented  the  revolt 
against  the  present,  and  the  apotheosis  of  the  past  with  a 
view  to  its  control  of  the  new  mind.  What  was  to  Thomas 
Arnold  the  evidence  of  God’s  action  in  the  present — viz., 
its  enlarging  liberty,  widening  knowledge,  saner  morals, 
purer  love  of  truth  as  truth  and  man  as  man  —was  to 
Newman,  who  read  it  through  the  ecclesiastical  changes  he 
both  hated  and  feared.  Liberalism,  or  the  apostasy  of  modern 
man  from  God,  and  constituted  the  need  for  bringing  out 
of  a period  when  God  most  manifestly  reigned,  forces  and 
motives  to  restrain  and  order  and  govern  the  present.  The 
theology  of  Maurice  had  its  basis  in  philosophy,  and  he  read 
Scripture  and  history  and  institutions  in  the  light  of  illuminat- 
ing philosophical  ideas  ; but  the  theology  of  Pusey  had  its 
basis  in  men  and  documents  which  he  regarded  as  authoritative 
and  normative,  and  his  special  method  of  proof  was  by 
catenas  of  texts — Biblical,  patristic,  and  scholastic — and  an 
exegesis  that  was  seldom  historical,  because  so  often  tradi- 
tional or  dogmatic,  though  when  occasion  demanded  he 
could  induce  his  authorities  to  speak  with  an  opportune  or 


THEIR  AFFINITIES  AND  DIFFERENCES. 


179 


more  modern  voice.  What  appealed  to  Kingsley  was  not 
the  ecclesiastical  past  of  England,  but  its  national  and  heroic 
elements  and  persons,  which  were  to  him  therefore  religious  ; 
but  what  appealed  to  the  Anglican  Newman  or  to  Hurrell 
Froude  was  men  who  could  be  described  as  saints  because 
they  had  served  the  Church  rather  than  the  nation  or  the 
people.  The  scholarship  of  Stanley  was  as  picturesque  and 
imaginative  as  the  poetry  of  Keble,  but  he  always  made  the 
past  speak  as  to  a learner  who  was  yet  a critic,  while  Keble 
made  his  attitude  to  the  past  a sort  of  religion,  the  wisest 
and  the  most  pious  men  being  those  who  most  revered  the 
names  sacred  to  ecclesiastical  mythology.  And  these  persons 
express  tendencies.  Theology  is  to  the  one  class  dogma, 
something  given  and  defined,  something  regulated  by  tradi- 
tion, creed,  or  canon-  -z>.,  it  is  here,  as  in  Catholicism,  part 
of  the  written  or  unwritten  law  of  the  institution,  with  no 
real  or  valid  existence  apart  from  it ; but  theology  is  to  the 
other  a form  of  modern  thought,  personal  rather  than  col- 
lective, the  activity  of  a mind  whose  field  and  obligations 
are  more  civil  than  ecclesiastical.  There  are  signs  that  these 
distinctions  may  be  transcended.  Minds  that  are  High 
Church  by  conviction  and  association  have  assimilated  a 
philosophy  that  may  yet  through  their  theology  transform 
their  eeclesiology. 

The  Puritans  and  the  Evangelicals  are  not  related  like  the 
High  Church  and  the  Broad.  They  have  hardly  any  his- 
torical connection,  and  differ  greatly  in  temper,  tendency, 
and  quality  of  theological  mind.  The  Puritans  were  primarily 
theologians,  possessed  with  the  passion  of  realizing  in  personal 
and  collective  life  the  ideals  of  their  theology  ; but  the 
Evangelicals  are  primarily  pastors  and  preachers,  who  accept 
the  order  under  which  they  live  as  the  one  which  best  enables 
them  to  save  souls.  The  Puritan  was  essentially  a son  of 
the  Reformed  theology,  profoundly  convinced  of  its  truth, 
conceiving  it  as  a sort  of  ideal  world  existing  in  the  mind 


l8o  PURITAN  AND  EVANGELICAL. 

of  God,  and  by  Him  communicated  to  His  people  that  it 
might  be  embodied  in  the  whole  of  life ; but  the  Evangelical 
is  essentially  a son  of  the  Evangelical  revival,  with  its  intensely 
individual  spirit,  its  love  of  souls,  its  belief  in  the  truth  as  the 
instrument  for  saving  them,  with  a certain  feeling  that  things 
which  do  or  even  might  endanger  this  are  evil,  and  a certain 
timid  tendency  to  regard  a too  inquisitive  mind  or  a too  ex- 
tensive and  varied  intellectual  activity  as  undesirable  or  even 
possibly  profane.  Their  respeetive  theologies  correspond  ; 
there  was  a large  idealism  in  the  Puritan,  as  became  the 
work  of  men  who  were  no  less  distinguished  as  thinkers  than 
as  scholars,  and  there  is  an  immediate  praetical  and  edifi- 
catory  purpose  in  the  Evangelical,  which  prevents  it  ever 
becoming  as  large  or  as  courageous  as  either  its  Puritan 
predecessor  or  its  High  Church  contemporary. 

This  analysis  of  the  English  schools  may  help  us  to  under- 
stand the  various  forces  that  have  made  English  theology  so 
mixed  yet  so  uniform  in  character.  It  has  never,  save  with 
some  of  the  Puritans  or  their  immediate  scholars,  been  theo- 
retical or  a priori — i.e.,  given  to  constructive  speculation  ; but 
its  main  interest  or  determinative  idea  has  been  either  poli- 
tical or  historical,  which  indeed  is  here  only  another  form 
of  the  political.  The  earliest  controversies  in  the  English 
Church  may  be  said  to  have  been  between  two  conceptions — 
whether  the  actual  Church  ought  to  be  brought  into  harmony 
with  the  ideal,  or  whether  the  actual  was  not  the  ideal 
Church.  This  of  course  involved  a difference  of  ideals  rather 
than  of  actuals : the  ideal  in  the  one  case  was  theological 
and  abstract,  a society  constructed  according  to  the  mind 
and  word  of  God  ; but  in  the  other  case  it  was  political  and 
concrete,  the  society  which  the  wisdom  of  the  past  had 
created  and  the  piety  of  the  present  was  bound  to  preserve 
and  administer.  The  former  was  the  Puritan  ideal,  the  latter 
the  Anglican  ; the  one  was  the  home  of  the  dynamic  forces, 
the  other  of  the  static,  that  shaped  the  English  Church, 


ANGLICAN  AND  PURITAN. 


l8l 


though  in  the  end  the  static  proved  stronger  than  the 
dynamic.  But  this  difference  was  not  at  first  due  to  a 
difference  in  theology — for  the  prevailing  and  even  official 
tendency  was  Calvinistic — but  to  the  relative  primacy  of  the 
theological  or  political  idea.  With  the  Puritan  the  theology 
was  primary,  and  so  his  doctrine  was  essentially  High 
Church  ; but  with  the  Anglican  the  polity  was  primary,  and 
so  his  doctrine  was,  under  the  conditions  then  existing,  as 
essentially  Erastian.  The  Puritan  said  : “ God  is  the  supreme 
Sovereign  ; His  will  ought  everywhere  to  be  obeyed,  in  State 
as  in  Church.  He  has  revealed  in  His  Word  and  by  the 
act  and  process  of  institution  an  order  or  law  for  the  Church 
which  He  has  not  done  for  the  State  ; therefore  the  Church 
must  be  constituted  according  to  the  revealed  ideal,  and  on 
it  the  State  cannot  be  allowed  to  impose  another  law  or 
discipline  than  those  so  manifestly  Divine.  In  the  kingdom 
of  God  the  king  is  a vassal  or  minister,  who  may  as  a man 
be  allowed  to  serve,  but  who  cannot  as  sovereign  or  head  be 
allowed  to  rule.  The  headship  belongs  to  Christ,  the  King ; 
and  He  rules  over  His  saints,  and  His  saints  are  known  by 
their  obedience  to  His  rule.  The  Church  is  the  people  of 
Christ  living  according  to  His  laws.”  But  the  Anglican 
replied  : “ Harmony  is  of  heaven,  law  is  of  God,  and  the 
Church  ought  to  be  so  ordered  by  law  as  to  be  the  home  of 
harmony.  Your  discipline  would  throw  all  things  into  chaos ; 
but  the  Church  we  know  is  distinguished  by  seemly  and 
heavenly  liturgies,  which  the  past  for  good  reason  created 
and  the  present  for  good  reason  has  retained.  This  Church 
is  composed  of  the  English  people  ; that  people  is  under 
one  aspect  the  State,  under  another  aspect  the  Church ; the 
sovereign  is  the  symbol  and  organ  of  their  corporate  unity, 
and  therefore  it  is  but  reasonable  that  he  should  be  the 
common  source  of  authority,  and  as  the  head  of  the  one  be 
the  head  of  both.”  These  ideals  were  thus  not  so  much 
different  as  opposite  ; they  made  their  appeal,  as  it  were,  to 


1 82  PURITAN  IDEA  THEOLOGICAL. 

different  senses,  started  from  opposed  premisses,  reasoned 
to  conclusions  which  had  to  the  one  party  all  the  cogency 
of  logical  deductions  from  accepted  principles,  to  the  other 
party  all  the  invalidity  of  a process  whose  false  beginning 
vitiated  its  logical  end.  But  what  is  evident  is  this  : the 
premiss  in  the  one  case  was  a theology,  a God  who  had 
revealed  a discipline  Ilis  people  were  bound  to  realize  and 
obey ; the  premiss  in  the  other  case  was  a polity,  a system 
rooted  in  the  past,  actual  in  the  present,  part  of  the  order 
which  had  grown  with  the  people,  and  at  once  interpreting 
to  it  and  realizing  for  it  the  faith  by  which  it  ought  to  live. 
The  God  the  Puritan  conceived  was  a being  of  so  absolute 
a moral  purity  that  He  could  not  allow  His  Church  to  be 
merged  in  the  State  or  controlled  by  the  civil  magistrate  or 
served  by  ministers  of  his  creation,  or  composed  of  any  but  the 
pure  in  heart  and  in  life  ; nor  could  He  love  any  ceremony, 
however  beautiful,  that  might  hinder  His  immediate  control  of 
the  conscience,  or  change  the  essence  or  even  the  emphasis 
of  service  from  conscience  and  reason  to  sense.  But  what  the 
Anglican  conceived  was  a worship  so  in  harmony  with  the 
forms  and  customs  and  traditions  of  the  past,  and  so  ex- 
pressive of  common  moods  and  sentiments,  that  the  Church 
and  its  services  should,  as  much  as  the  State,  represent  in 
its  own  sphere  the  collective  and  the  continued  being  of  the 
people.  The  differences  were  thus  radical,  and  the  funda- 
mental point  is  touched  when  we  say.  The  determinative 
idea  was  to  the  Puritan  theological,  but  to  the  Anglican 
political  ; in  other  words,  the  regulative  notion  of  the  one 
was  the  theology,  of  the  other  the  institution.^ 

Now,  the  Anglican  or  institutional  idea,  so  soon  as  it 
became  defined  and,  as  it  were,  conscious,  acted  on  theology 
in  a characteristic  manner,  modifying  all  its  absolute  ele- 
ments, shrinking,  if  we  may  so  speak,  from  the  direct  and 
naked  sovereignty  of  God.  There  is  a remarkable  change 
* See  note  at  end  of  chapter,  pp.  188-190. 


ANGLICAN  IDEA  POLITICAL. 


83 


in  what  we  may  call  the  official  theology  of  the  Church 
between  Elizabeth  and  the  first  Charles.  Under  Elizabeth 
Calvinism  was  dominant ; the  Thirty-nine  Articles  are  in 
their  doctrine  higher  than  the  old  Confessio  Scoticana  ; 
the  Bishops’  Bible,  as  sanctioned  by  Elizabeth’s  bishops, 
contains  the  true  Genevan  doctrine ; Parker  and  Grindal, 
Whitgift  and  Bancroft,  were  quite  as  Calvinistic  as  Goodman 
or  Jewel,  Cartwright  or  Perkins  ; the  Lambeth  Articles  are 
as  high  as  the  Genevan  Catechism  ; Hooker  thinks  Calvin 
“ incomparably  the  wisest  man  that  ever  the  French  Church 
did  enjoy,”  and  though  he  opposed  the  Genevan  discipline, 
he  had  nothing  to  say  against  the  theology.  - But  under 
Charles  the  Anglican  tendency  was  Ar-minian,  the  milder 
theology  and  the  high  polity  going  hand  in  hand.  The 
significance  of  the  change  does  not  so  much  lie  in  the  new' 
theology  as  in  the  more  elastic  political  doctrine  it  allowed. 
Laud  was  not  an  Arminian  simply  because  he  was  able 
the  better  to  resist  the  Puritans  by  contradicting  their 
theology,  but  because  his  theory  of  Divine  right  of  kings  and 
bishops  had  freer  scope  and  could  have  a more  justified  exist- 
ence under  a conditional  theology  than  under  one  which  so 
magnified  the  Divine  sovereignty  as  to  leave  no  room  or 
place  for  any  absolute  sovereignty  of  man  over  the  people 
of  God.  And  Laud  did  not  stand  alone ; the  Anglicans, 
like  Jeremy  Taylor,  Bull,  Bancroft,  Barrow,  became  the 
severest  critics  of  Calvinism  ; and  never  again  do  we  see,  as 
under  Elizabeth  and  James,  the  highest  offices  of  the  Church 
held  by  Calvinists,  and  representative  theologians  sent  as 
delegates  to  help  a Calvinistic  synod  to  formulate  a high, 
aggressive,  and  uncompromising  Calvinism. 

But  this  was  not  the  only  result  of  the  action  of  the 
now  determinative  institutional  idea.  Anglican  theology 
became,  we  cannot  say  historical,  for  it  was  too  special 
and  apologetic  in  its  scope  to  be  entitled  to  this  name, 
but  retrospective,  traditional,  patristic.  It  had  a twofold 


184 


THEOLOGY  IN  THE  ANGLICAN 


polemic — against  the  Puritan  and  against  the  Catholic  ; 
and  its  appeal  from  both  was  to  the  ancient  and  undi- 
vided Church — an  appeal  whose  legitimacy  the  one  opponent 
might  admit,  but  the  other  could  only  deny.  Hence  the 
most  characteristic  works  in  Anglican  theology  became,  as 
it  were,  antiquarian  rather  than  constructive.  The  idea 
that  a theology  was  the  most  comprehensive  of  all  philo- 
sophies ceased  to  live  for  the  Anglican — at  least,  there  was 
a cessation  of  all  attempts  to  realize  it.  The  only  real 
exception  to  this  law  was  the  Cambridge  Platonists,  but 
they  were  men  trained  in  Puritan  colleges  during  the 
Puritan  ascendency,  and  are  significant  as  indicating  what 
sort  of  schools  this  ascendency,  if  it  had  continued,  would 
have  developed  in  the  Church.  The  institutional  idea  has 
so  governed  the  theological  development  that  even  questions 
of  pure  and  Biblical  theology  have  been  read  through  it. 
The  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation  have  been  discussed  as 
branches  of  patristic,  and  as  determined  by  the  oecumenical 
creeds  and  definitions  of  the  specific  period  to  which  the 
Anglican  made  his  appeal.  The  result  has  been  a remark- 
able difference  between  the  theological  activity  of  the 
Anglican  and  the  other  Reformed  Churches.  These  latter 
have  been  great  in  scientific  systems,  rich  in  interpretative 
ideas,  fertile  in  constructive  endeavours.  The  Lutherans 
elaborated  the  scholastic  comniunicatio  idiomatum  into  a 
consistent  and  logical  doctrine  ; their  attempts  at  a more 
reasonable  Christology  have  instructed  all  the  schools  of 
Christendom,  even  those  of  the  later  Roman  and  Anglo- 
Catholicism.  The  Reformed  Church  had  many  theologies 
that  were  whole  philosophies,  seeking  to  interpret  the  uni- 
verse, man  with  all  his  good  and  evil,  history  with  all 
its  failure  and  achievement,  in  the  terms  of  the  theistic  idea. 
From  these  Churches  came  the  doctrine  of  the  covenants 
which  did  so  much  to  create  the  notion  of  order  and 
progress  in  history,  and  a scientific  because  a historical 


AND  IN  THE  OTHER  REFORMED  CHURCHES.  1 85 

interpretation  of  the  Bible.  And  they  more  than  any 
others  have  created  science  in  sacred  learning,  the  criticism 
that  has  restored  the  Scriptures  to  reason  and  conscience 
and  life.  But  the  Anglican  has  lived  within  a narrower 
range,  and  has  worked  for  a more  specific  purpose.  He 
has  made  the  Fathers  and  the  history  of  a particular  period 
emphatically  his  own,  and  he  has  done  it  that  he  might 
vindicate  the  polity,  the  creed  which  the  polity  carried  with 
it,  and  the  political  rights  and  privileges  of  his  own  Church. 
He  may  have  done  well  in  so  doing  ; all  that  concerns  us 
is  to  note  that  he  has  done  it,  and  has  thus  given  to  his 
theology  its  peculiar  and  distinctive  characteristic. 

§ VI. — Retrospect  and  Conclusions. 

But,  now,  what  is  the  significance  of  this  discussion  ? 

I.  We  have  been  able  to  distinguish  the  various  factors 
that  at  once  govern  the  formation  and  growth  of  theology 
and  determine  its  specific  character  in  a given  period  or 
Church.  The  consciousness  of  the  time,  whether  personal  or 
collective,  supplies  the  factor  determinative  of  form  ; and  the 
dominant  element  in  the  consciousness  determines  the  par- 
ticular point  from  which  the  matter  will  be  construed. 

In  the  ancient  Eastern  Church  the  formal  factor  was 
Greek  philosophy.  Its  theology  was  the  endeavour  of  the 
old  philosophical  mind  to  construe  the  new  Christian  history 
in  the  old  philosophical  terms.  The  construction  had  all  the 
excellencies  and  all  the  defects  of  the  minds  in  and  through 
which  it  took  its  rise.  On  the  one  hand,  it  fitly  closed  and 
completed  the  history  of  Greek  philosophy  by  means  of  a 
scientific  doctrine  of  God  and  the  Godhead,  which  held 
within  it  the  germs  of  the  conciliation  of  the  old  antinomies 
of  transcendence  and  immanence.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
fitly  began  a series  of  endeavours  to  interpret  the  highest 
truths  of  the  reason  through  the  surest  realities  of  the  faith. 


86 


SUMMARY  OF  ARGUMENT. 


But  it  was  only  a beginning,  for  the  construction  was  more 
philosophical  than  religious,  so  purely  metaphysical  that  it 
failed  to  preserve  and  express  those  august  yet  gracious 
ethical  elements  that  were  the  very  essence  of  the  conception 
of  God  that  came  in  Jesus  Christ. 

In  the  ancient  Latin  Church  the  formal  factor  was  repre- 
sented first  by  Stoical  and  then  by  neo-Platonic  philosophy 
and  Roman  polity.  These  acting  together,  and  strengthened 
by  the  popular  religion,  resulted  in  the  gradual  assimilation 
of  the  polity  by  the  Christian  society,  its  apotheosis  when 
assimilated,  and  the  interpretation  of  man’s  relations  to  God 
in  the  terms  of  law. 

In  the  mediaeval  period  the  formal  factors  were  the  Church, 
which  had  incorporated  the  Empire  while  transmitting  the 
religion.  Law,  Roman  and  Teutonic,  and  Greek  Philosophy, 
especially  as  a dialectic  or  doctrine  of  logical  forms ; and  the 
result  was  that  we  had  three  great  questions  due,  respec- 
tively, to  the  translation  of  political  sovereignty  into  spiritual 
supremacy,  the  terms  of  man’s  reconciliation  with  God  into 
those  of  a legal  process,  the  order  and  process  of  our  know- 
ledge into  the  determinative  principle  in  theology. 

In  the  modern  Churches  the  ancient  and  mediaeval 
formulae  have  survived,  but  have  been  variously  articulated 
and  modified  according  as  the  regulative  idea  was  political 
or  theological. 

2.  But  alongside  the  formal  factor  stands  the  material — 
i.e.,  the  matter  whose  meaning  is  to  be  determined.  This  is 
represented  by  the  creative  Personality  of  the  Faith  and  His 
authentic  history.  This  history  being  written,  is  invariable, 
but  not  so  the  history  of  the  Christian  mind  or  consciousness 
in  relation  to  it.  Variation  has,  from  the  very  nature  of  the 
case,  been  here  the  law.  The  longer  the  history  lives  in  the 
consciousness  and  penetrates  it,  the  more  does  the  conscious- 
ness become  able  to  interpret  the  history  in  its  own  terms 
and  according  to  its  own  contents.  The  old  pagan  mind  into 


CONCLUSIONS  AND  TERMINATION.  1 87 

which  Christianity  first  came  could  not  possibly  be  the  best 
interpreter  of  Christianity,  and  the  more  the  mind  is  cleansed 
of  the  pagan  the  more  qualified  it  becomes  to  interpret  the 
religion.  It  is  therefore  reasonable  to  expect  that  the  later 
forms  of  faith  should  be  the  truer  and  the  purer. 

3.  Every  great  period  of  progress  or  development  in 
theology  has  been  marked  by  the  ascendency  of  the  material 
and  inner  over  the  formal  and  outer  factors  ; in  other  words, 
the  direct  effect  of  every  fresh  return  to  the  sources  has  been 
the  enlargement  and  re-formation  of  religious  thought.  This 
is  true  in  the  case  of  the  anti-Gnostic  Fathers,  whose  use  of 
the  sources  is  seen  in  the  way  they  transcend  rather  than 
repeat  tradition,  and  leave  a theology  richer  than  anything 
that  had  preceded  it,  especially  in  those  elements  most  dis- 
tinctive of  the  original  and  Apostolic  Word.  Augustine 
marks  another  moment  of  return  ; and  his  pre-eminence  over 
Tertullian  is  due  to  his  deeper  reading  of  Paul.  The 
Reformation  is  a similar  morhent,  the  only  possible  result 
of  the  recovered  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  by  men  who 
believed  that  they  revealed  the  mind  of  Christ  and  His 
Apostles.  In  each  of  these  periods  the  return  to  the  sources 
has  enriched  the  faith  and  purified  the  life  of  all  Churches, 
even  the  most  resistant.  ' 

4.  Our  day  has  also  been  marked  by  a return  to  the 
sources  of  a quite  specific  character, — it  has  been  more  dis- 
tinctly than  any  other  a return  to  the  historical  Christ.  The 
most  potent  influence  in  the  Scriptures  for  the  anti-Gnostic 
Fathers,  Augustine,  and  the  Reformers  was  the  Pauline.  Paul 
has  been  in  all  times  what  he  was  in  his  own — the  greatest 
of  all  the  Apostolic  forces  that  work  for  evolution  and  change. 
But  the  modern  return  is  to  Christ,  and  to  Him  as  the  Person 
who  created  alike  the  Evangelists  and  the  Apostles,  by  whom 
He  is  described  and  interpreted.  He  has  become  the  centre 
from  and  through  which  all  are  studied,  and  is  not  simply 
looked  at  through  the  eyes  of  Paul  or  John. 


i88 


CARTWRIGHT  AND  WHITGIFT. 


5.  This  is  not  an  individual  or  incidental  thing,  but  repre- 
sents the  tide  and  passion  of  the  time ; is,  as  it  were,  the  sum 
and  essence  of  the  living  historical,  philosophical,  and  religious 
spirit.  This  is  what  we  must  now  attempt  to  understand  and 
describe,  that  we  may  see  how  the  consciousness  of  the  time 
has  become  full  of  Christ,  and  its  reason  been  called  anew  to 
His  interpretation.  He  is  the  end  of  critical  and  historical 
inquiry,  but  the  starting-point  of  constructive  thought.  The 
determinative  idea  of  theology  is  not  the  Church,  but  the 
Christ.  In  harmony  with  His  mind  must  it  be  built,  and  by 
agreement  with  Him  its  truth  determined. 


NOTE.  See  p.  182. 

The  differences  between  the  Puritan  and  the  Anglican  positions  may 
seem  to  be  stated  too  sharply  and  antithetically  in  the  text,  and  with  too 
little  regard  to  changes  of  men  and  times;  but  they  represent  the  essential 
points  that  emerged  in  the  controversy  between  Cartwright  and  Whitgift, 
and  determined  the  later  developments  of  the  two  tendencies,  Cartwright’s 
positions  may  be  stated  thus : the  Church  is  prior  in  being  and  superior 
in  authority  to  the  State,  has  the  right  as  a distinct  and  separate  and 
higher  society  to  make  its  own  laws,  appoint  its  own  officers,  enforce  its 
own  discipline,  frame  its  own  creed,  and  regulate  its  own  ceremonies ; it 
is  bound  to  do  so  in  accordance  with  the  mind  and  will  of  its  Founder 
as  revealed  in  the  New  Testament,  and  not  to  allow  any  prince  or  civil 
magistrate  as  such  to  impose  laws  upon  it  or  occupy  a place  in  it  that 
was  not  assigned  to  him  by  Christ.  Whitgift’s  positions  were  the  exact 
antitheses  of  these:  “the  Church  could  not  as  a visible  society  ” with  “an 
external  government”  be  established  without  the  civil  magistrate,  who  may 
also  in  respect  to  it  as  such  be  called  its  head  by  virtue  of  “ the  supreme 
authority  given  of  God  to  the  prince  over  his  people  in  all  causes”;  he 
had  therefore  those  powers  as  regards  laws,  ministers,  creed,  and  cere- 
monies which  Cartwright  had  claimed  for  the  Church  alone,  though  of 
course  he  was  not  qualified  to  exercise  specifically  priestly  functions. 
Cartwright,  indeed,  held  that  in  “ruinous  decays  and  overthrows  of  reli- 
gion,” when  there  was  “no  lawful  ministry  to  set  good  orders,”  “that 
then  the  prince  ought  to  do  it  ” ; and  that  even  if  any  “ lawful  ministry  ” 
agreed  to  “ any  unlawful  or  unmeet  order,  that  the  prince  ought  to  stay 
that  order.”  But  his  very  exceptions  define  his  rule : Reformation  was  the 
duty  of  every  man,  especially  the  man  most  able  to  effect  it.  It  was 
characteristic  that  Cartwright  maintained  that  “the  Commonwealth  must 
be  made  to  agree  with  the  Church,”  but  Whitgift  that  “ the  Church  must 


PURITAN  AND  ANGLICAN  ANTITHESES. 


be  framed  according  to  the  Commonwealth”;  Cartwright  that  “although 
the  godly  magistrate  be  the  head  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  a great 
ornament  unto  the  Church,  yet  he  is  but  a member  of  the  same,”  but 
Whitgift  that  this  was  to  “overthrow  monarchies,”  since  it  made  the 
prince  “a  servant,  no  master,  a subject,  no  prince,  under  government,  no 
governor,  in  matters  pertaining  to  the  Church  ” ; Cartwright  that  “ infidels 
under  a Christian  magistrate  are  members  of  the  Commonwealth,  but  not 
of  the  Church,”  nor  are  known  “ drunkards  or  whoremongers,”  and  the 
excommunicated,  “ though  sundered  from  the  Church,”  may  yet  retain  his 
“ burgeship  or  freedom  in  the  city,”  but  Whitgift  that  while  “in  the 
Apostles’  time  all  or  the  most  that  were  Christians  were  virtuous  and 
godly,”  yet  “now  the  Church  is  full  of  hypocrites,  dissemblers,  drunkards, 
whoremongers.”  It  is  this  latter  that  gives  its  religious  significance  to 
the  controversy,  and  makes  apparent  the  moral  passion  that  was  at  its 
heart.  On  the  Puritan  side  what  they  wanted,  and  w'ere  by  their  theo- 
logical idea  bound  to  want,  was  a Church  in  which  the  moral  will  of  God 
should  be  supreme. 

The  operation  of  the  two  principles  was  not  on  either  side  uniform.  The 
Puritan  principle  took  a double  line, — one  section  held  to  the  collective 
idea,  and  wished  the  Church,  without  ceasing  to  be  national,  to  be  organ- 
ized on  the  Genevan  or  Presbyterian  model ; another  section  adopted 
the  Separatist  idea,  and  held  that  the  way  to  proceed  was  by  persons 
rather  than  parishes,  or  the  method  of  the  Apostolic  age.  The  one  re- 
ceived its  logical  and  historical  expression  at  the  hands  of  the  Westminster 
Assembly ; the  other  in  the  societies  of  the  Separatists  under  Elizabeth 
and  James,  and  though  they  have  little  real  historical  connection  and  are 
distinguished  by  specific  differences,  in  the  later  Independents  whose 
representatives  are  the  “five  dissenting  brethren”  at  Westminster,  and 
in  John  Milton.  The  note  of  the  former  was  the  place  it  assigned  to  the 
“civil  magistrate”;  it  was  his  duty  “to  take  order  that  unity  and  peace  be 
preserved  in  the  Church,  that  the  truth  of  God  be  kept  pure  and  entire, 
and  that  all  blasphemies  and  heresies  be  suppressed.”  Hence  toleration 
was  no  part  of  this  creed ; indeed,  round  it  the  fiercest  of  the  controversies 
within  and  around  the  Assembly  raged,  the  Scotch  delegates  storming 
against  it  with  a perfervid  zeal  the  English  people  have  never  forgotten, 
and  Milton  has  immortalized  in  the  famous  sonnet  which  described  “New 
Presbyter  as  old  priest  writ  large.”  On  the  other  hand,  the  note  of  the 
early  Separatist  and  the  later  Independent  was  that  the  function  of  the 
“civil  magistrate”  was,  as  Robert  Browne  phrased  it,  “only  to  rule  the 
commonwealth  in  all  outward  justice,”  and  not  to  “compel  religion,”  or 
“force  submission  to  ecclesiastical  government  by  laws  and  penalties.” 
For  as  John  Robinson,  the  Pilgrim  Father,  argued,  “ civil  causes  could 
never  bring  forth  spiritual  eft'ects  ” ; “compulsive  laws”  might  create 
hypocrisy,  but  not  the  spirit  that  “ received  the  Word  gladly.”  And  so 
John  Milton  said,  “Though  the  civil  magistrate  were  able,  yet  hath  he 
no  right  to  interfere  with  conscience  or  anything  that  pertaineth  to  the 
Church  of  Christ.”  “ To  compel  the  profane  to  things  holy  in  his  profane- 


SEPARATIST  AND  HIGH  CHURCH. 


190 

ness  is  all  one  under  the  Gospel,  as  to  have  compelled  the  unclean  to 
sacrifice  in  his  uncleanness  under  the  law.” 

The  Anglican  principle  also  took  a double  line,  according  as  the  power 
that  established  the  Church  or  the  established  polity — i.e.^  the  episcopate 
— was  emphasized.  In  the  earlier  period  Bancroft  and  Bilson  represent 
the  latter,  as  Whitgift  the  former.  Bilson  denied  that  princes  could 
“ authorize  pastors  to  preach  the  Word  or  to  administer  the  Sacraments”; 
but  though  to  them  the  discipline  and  ministry  of  the  Church  are  com- 
mitted, they  are  not  in  a Christian  state  to  do  these  things  without  the 
consent  and  help  of  the  “ civil  magistrate.”  But  the  emergence  of  the 
question  as  to  the  ultimate  authority  in  the  State,  king  or  people,  raised 
the  same  question  as  to  the  Church,  with  the  result  that  there  arose  the 
theories  on  the  one  hand  of  the  double  Divine  right,  king’s  and  bishop’s, 
characteristically  the  bishop’s  being  secondary,  the  king’s  primary,  and  on 
the  other  its  popular  correlate,  that  the  polity  was  a matter  of  indifference, 
its  specific  form  a thing  to  be  determined  by  the  people  through  their 
representatives.  Laud  is  the  typical  name  on  the  one  side,  John  Selden 
on  the  other.  Laud  is  an  autocratic  or  monarchical  Erastian,  but  Selden 
a democratic  or  parliamentary.  The  Laudian  theory  made  the  bishop 
depend  for  his  jurisdiction  and  authority  on  the  king,  and  out  of  this  came 
what  can  only  be  described  as  the  apotheosis  of  the  king  by  the  Anglican 
theology  of  the  seventeenth  century.  On  the  basis  it  supplied  the  Act  of 
Uniformity  was  passed ; and  though  the  Act  still  survives,  the  theory  died 
before  the  hard  and  disillusioning  facts  of  the  Revolution  Settlement  and 
the  Hanoverian  dynasty.  As  a consequence,  the  relations  between  the  royal 
and  ecclesiastical  powers  were  conceived  more  in  the  manner  of  the 
Separatists,  and  indeed  their  very  phraseology  was  unconsciously  re- 
peated. Thus  Leslie’s  famous  treatise  on  the  “ Regale  ” was  described  in 
words  strangely  suggestive  of  the  document  that  may  be  said  to  have 
occasioned  the  rise  of  the  name  “Independents,”  as  “concerning  the 
Independency  of  the  Church  upon  any  power  on  earth,  in  the  exercise 
of  her  purely  spiritual  authority  and  power.”  The  modern  High  Church 
is  on  this  point,  so  far  at  least  as  concerns  theory,  more  of  the  mind  of 
Cartwright  than  of  Hooker.  While  they  hold  with  the  latter  as  to  the 
framework  or  outward  structure  of  the  Church,  they  hold  with  the  former 
as  to  its  separate  authority  and  distinction  from  the  State.  In  theory, 
too,  they  here  agree  more  with  the  Separatists  than  with  Laud,  and  hold 
in  principle,  though  not  in  practice,  with  the  men  who  refused  obedience 
to  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  and  agree  in  practice,  though  not  in  principle, 
with  the  men  who  enforced  it. 


DIVISION  11. 


HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  AND  THE  HISTORY 
OF  CHRIST. 


CHAPTER  I 


THROUGH  LITERATURE  AND  PHILOSOPHY  TO 
CRITICISM. 

HE  history  of  the  process  which  has  made  the  historical 


Christ  the  starting-point  of  constructive  theology  lies 
outside  our  present  purpose  ; but  a brief  sketch,  exhibiting 
its  relation  to  modern  tendencies,  is  necessary.  While  the 
ecclesiastical  revival  in  England  was  making  its  first  blind  and 
impassioned  attempts  at  a beginning,  the  philosophical  and 
critical  tendencies  that  were  to  do  so  much  for  our  knowledge 
of  the  primitive  Church  were  in  Germany  endeavouring  to 
concentrate  themselves  on  Christ  and  the  literature  of  the 
New  Testament  The  two  movements  were  in  spirit,  temper, 
design,  and  agencies  very  different,  and  it  would  have  been 
well  if  each  could  have  qualified  the  other.  If  the  Anglican 
men  had  combined  with  their  own  profound  love  of  the 
Church  and  devotion  to  its  Head,  the  scientific  conscience, 
the  intellectual  courage  and  veracity,  the  literary  and 
historical  sense,  of  the  German  theologians,  they  might  have 
accomplished  the  most  catholic  revival  in  history,  without 
any  of  the  violences  to  reason,  to  truth,  and  to  charity  that 
attended  both  the  manner  and  the  results  of  their  work. 


192  LITERARY  CRITICISM  IN  THE  HANDS  OF  LESSING 

If  the  German  critics  had,  in  addition  to  their  own  great 
qualities,  possessed  the  reverence,  the  love  of  the  beautiful, 
and  the  sense  for  the  holy  that  distinguished  the  Anglicans, 
then  their  work,  while  no  less  thorough  and  fruitful,  would 
have  been  more  religious.  There  is  nothing  that  so  strikes 
a student  of  the  Anglican  revival  as  the  complete  uncon- 
sciousness in  its  representative  men  of  the  deepest  of  all  the 
problems  which  their  own  theory  and  contentions  involved, 
and  which,  for  altogether  different  reasons  and  purposes,  the 
greatest  of  their  contemporaries  were  trying  to  face  and 
to  formulate  ; and  there  is  nothing  that  so  surprises  the 
student  of  German  criticism  as  its  want  of  awe  in  touching 
beliefs  quick  with  those  loves  and  hopes  that  are  dearest  to 
the  human  heart.  Of  these  two  movements,  started  and 
conducted  in  such  total  unconsciousness  of  each  other,  it  is 
hard  to  tell  which  will  have  the  most  enduring  influence. 
But  one  thing  is  evident  : knowledge  and  thought  are  in  the 
long-run  mightier  than  institutions  and  offices,  and  we  may 
well  leave  the  issue  to  the  truth  of  God  and  the  reason  of  man. 

§ I. — Tfie  Beginnings  of  Historical  Criticism  ; 
Literature. 

But  our  concern  is  simply  with  the  critical  movement  in  its 
relation  to  the  history  and,  at  least  so  far  as  it  bears  upon 
the  person  of  Christ,  the  literature  of  the  New  Testament. 
In  order  to  understand  this  movement  we  must  survey  the 
tendencies  out  of  which  it  grew.  It  belongs  to  our  own 
century,  and  is  part  of  its  reaction  against  the  hard  and  narrow 
rationalism  of  the  preceding.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
pragmatical  and  negative  criticism  of  the  Deists,  but  represents 
the  larger  and  more  constructive  spirit  that  distinguishes  the 
nineteenth  from  the  eighteenth  century,  especially  in  all  that 
concerns  philosophy,  literature,  science,  history,  and  religion. 

I.  The  literary  revival  preceded  the  critical,  helped  to  deter- 
mine both  its  spirit  and  its  problems,  the  attitude  of  the  mind 


BECOMES  HISTORICAL  AND  RELIGIOUS. 


193 


as  well  to  religion  as  to  religious  ideas,  their  forms  and  their 
history.  Lessing,  though  he  belongs  to  the  eighteenth,  was 
the  prophet  and  forerunner  of  the  nineteenth,  century  ; he, 
by  his  theological  no  less  than  his  literary  activity,  stands 
between  and  unites  the  two  worlds.  By  him  the  Wolfen- 
biittel  Fragments,  the  last  words  of  the  dying  Deism,  were 
edited,  and  by  him  the  new  critical  thought  was  first  con- 
sciously expressed.^  His  earlier  intellectual  sympathies  were 
with  Deism  ; his  later,  if  Jacobi  is  to  be  believed,  with 
Pantheism.^  The  shallower  minds  of  his  day  thought  that 
religion  stood  or  fell  with  certain  words  and  events : the  Deist 
imagined  that  he  had  only  to  prove  certain  words  derived 
or  erroneous  or  insignificant,  certain  events  impossible  or 
fictitious,  in  order  to  prove  revealed  religion  false  ; the  ration- 
alist, that  he  had  only  to  prove  what  were  supposed  to  be 
miracles  to  be  unexpected  coincidences  or  the  hasty  inter- 
pretations of  an  unillumined  mind,  in  order  to  harmonize 
religion  with  nature  and  maintain  the  truth  of  its  history  ; 
the  apologist,  that  he  had  only  to  prove  the  literal  veracity  of 
the  word  and  the  probability  of  the  event  in  order  to  vindicate 
religion  and  save  it  altogether.  But  Lessing  endeavoured  to 
free  it  from  the  pragmatic  literalism  of  all  three,  and  sought 

* Lessing’s  attitude  to  Christianity  is  too  vexed  a problem  to  be  discussed 
here.  Many  things  make  it  hard  to  determine ; so  much  of  his  theological 
activity  was  polemical,  and  so  much  of  his  polemic  was  either  yvfjLvaa-TiKas 
or  simply  argimienta  ad  ho7nines.  But  as  the  controversy  turned  so  much 
on  the  function  and  meaning  of  the  Bible  for  religion,  his  contributions 
to  it  bear  directly  on  the  questions  of  criticism  and  religion.  His  most 
polemical  treatises  are  full  of  constructive  ideas  ; but  of  course  it  is  when 
he  sets  himself  to  positive  work,  as  in  his  “Nathan  der  Weise”  and  the 
“Erziehung,”  that  we  find  him  at  his  best.  We  should  take  a more 
positive  view  of  his  personal  religion  than  Hebler  does — “A  Christian 
non-Christian”  (“  Lessingstudien,”  p.  103). 

^ Jacobi’s  “ Werke,”  vol.  iv.,  pp.  37  ff.  (ed.  1819).  But  though  there  are 
distinct  enough  traces  of  Spinoza  in  Lessing,  yet  he  is  no  Pantheist ; 
Spinoza  influenced  him  more  on  the  historico-critical  than  the  philo- 
sophical side.  His  God  was  supernatural,  though  not  extra-natural,  a 
free,  conscious  Spirit,  the  eternal  Providence  who  determined  His  own 
ends. 


13 


194  HIS  THEORIES  OF  REVELATION,  THE  EDUCATION 

its  essence  in  the  contents  of  conscience  and  the  truths  of 
reason.^  The  sensuous,  whether  as  written  word  or  miracu- 
lous act,  could  neither  constitute  nor  prove  the  spiritual.  Books 
could  be  only  transitory  vehicles  of  eternal  realities.  Religion 
had  existed  before  the  Bible — could  exist  without  it.^  Revela- 
tion, which  was  the  communication  by  God  of  new  or  higher 
truths  to  the  mind,  was  necessary  because  of  human  weakness, 
which  without  such  Divine  action  would  hinder  and  hamper 
human  progress.  Humanity  was  a colossal  man  whose  educa- 
tion was  in  process,  and  education  was  revelation.^  In  his 
childhood  he  was  instructed  by  symbols  and  ruled  by  laws 
whose  sanctions  were  physical  rewards  and  penalties  ; in  his 
youth,  by  personal  authority  and  motives  drawn  from  a future 
life  appealing  to  his  imagination  and  heart.  God  was  the 
Educator  of  man  ; the  Divine  Spirit  was  active  in  the  race. 
But  the  theory  allowed  to  no  positive  or  revealed  religion  an 
absolute  value.  Each  had  only  a “ psedagogic  ” worth,  was  a 
sensuous  form  needed  to  make  the  full  truths  of  reason  in- 
telligible to  sense-bound  man.  To  speak  with  the  philosophy 
of  the  time,  revelation  was  the  method  by  which  the  ideas  of 
religion  were  conveyed  into  the  intellect  and  impressed  as  laws 
upon  the  conscience.  And  here  the  fundamental  thought  of 
his  “ Nathan  " comes  in  to  complete  his  doctrine  of  revelation 
and  religion.  It  pleaded  for  toleration  by  vindicating  the 
right  of  other  religions  than  our  own  to  exist,  based  on  their 
power  to  produce  intellectual  veracity  and  moral  excellence. 
The  three  rings,  which  are  the  symbols  of  the  three  religions, 
are  in  an  equal  measure  gifts  of  the  one  Father.  A Moham- 

1 “ Ueber  den  Beweis  des  Geistes  u.  der  Kraft,”  “ Theol.  Streitschriften,” 
pp.  3 ff.  (ed.  1867).  Here  he  argues:  “Accidental  truths  of  history  can 
never  be  evidence  for  necessary  truths  of  the  reason : that  Christ  raised 
a dead  man  does  not  prove  that  God  has  a Son  co-essential  with 
Himself”  (pp.  6,  7).  In  his  doctrine  of  the  relation  of  the  Bible  and  religion 
Lessing  was  as  much  opposed  to  his  own  Fragmentist  as  to  the  orthodox. 
Cf.  “ Axiomata,”  vii.-ix. 

* “ Axiomata,”  the  second  of  the  Anti-Goeze  pamphlets.  Cf.  Axioms,  i.-viii. 

® “ Die  Erziehung  des  Menschengeschlechts,”  §§  1-5,  17,  26,  etc. 


OF  MAN,  AND  THE  RELIGIONS  : SCHILLER.  I95 

medan  or  Jew,  realizing  the  ideal  truths  his  religion  expresses 
is  as  truly  a religious  man  as  a Christian.^  And  so  Lessing 
was  not  a disciple  of  the  Christian  religion  or  the  systems 
which  Churches  have  built  on  the  Gospel,  but  only  of  what 
he  called  the  religion  of  Christ — i.e.,  the  religion  which  Jesus 
as  a man  knew  and  practised,^  and  which  every  man  can 
have  in  common  with  him.  His  whole  tendency  was  to  release 
the  spirit  from  the  letter,  and  to  reconcile  the  free  handling 
of  sacred  histories  and  records  with  reverence  of  mind.  For, 
according  to  Lessing,  there  was  no  intrinsic  or  absolute  neces- 
sity for  revelation  ; once  it  has  perfectly  educated  man,  he 
can  dispense  with  it.  The  letter  with  its  symbolism,  which 
is  a necessity  to  the  man  still  in  the  sensuous  stage,  is  a mere 
superfluity  to  the  man  who  has  so  grown  as  to  be  able  to 
walk  according  to  the  spirit.  The  theory  which  made  religion 
so  independent  of  the  letter  could  not  but  contribute  to  the 
growth  of  the  criticism  which  was  concerned  with  the  written 
word.  It  needed  time  to  show  whether  it  was  possible  to 
handle  the  letter  without  touching  the  spirit. 

2.  Schiller,  too,  acted  powerfully,  if  indirectly,  on  religious 
thought.  His  spirit  was  too  moral  to  allow  him  to  be  other 
than  a Theist,  characteristically  of  the  Kantian  type.  Life 
was  full  of  ethical  significance  ; the  stage,  he  thought,  ought 
to  be  an  ethical  teacher,  showing  the  world  the  moral  law  in 
action.  And  just  because  the  ethical  in  him  was  so  intense 
he  loved  the  ideal,  though  not  the  actual,  Christianity.  In  its 

* Though  “ Nathan  der  Weise  ” seemed  to  establish  a sort  of  equation 
between  the  three  great  religions,  yet  its  whole  conception  was  due  to  the 
Christian  spirit ; within  neither  of  the  other  two  religions  could  it  have 
risen.  Character  is  an  old  test  of  truth.  It  is  remarkable  if  we  compare 
“Nathan”  with  “Die  Erziehung,”  that  in  the  latter  Islam  has  no  place  or 
function. 

2 This  was  a distinction  which  Lessing  owed  to  Reimarus,  and  made 
the  title  of  a suggestive  little  tractate.  Lessing  has  some  claim  to  notice 
as  a speculative  theologian.  His  construction  of  the  Trinity,  “Die  Erzie- 
hung,” § 73,  contains,  indeed,  no  new  element,  but  it  is  remarkable  as  a 
forecast  of  many  later  attempts  at  the  speculative  restoration  of  what  had 
been  critically  dissolved. 


196 


GOETHE  : HIS  IDEAL  HELLENIC 


pure  form,  the  representation  of  moral  beauty,  or  the  incar- 
nation of  the  holy,^  the  Christian  religion  was  in  practical  life  a 
depraved,  an  offensive,  and  a mean,  because  broken,  representa- 
tion of  the  highest.  Its  distinctive  quality  or  character  as  ideal 
lay  in  its  moral  energy,  its  power  to  change  the  categorical 
imperative  into  free  inclination,  to  create  the  beautiful  soul 
possessed  of  the  virtue  which  is  nothing  else  than  “ an  inclina- 
tion to  duty.”  With  it  and  as  its  essence  he  sings  the  gospel 
of  the  love  which  impelled  God  to  create  man,  which  uplifts 
man  to  God,  and  makes  all  men  brothers.  But  yet  its  ethical 
majesty  was  not  all  gain  ; the  apotheosis  of  the  spirit,  by 
undeifying  nature,  impoverished  man.  He  needed  the  fair 
humanities  of  old  religion  ; and  so,  though  admiring  Mono- 
theism, the  poet  mourned  the  loss  of  the  old  gods. 

“ Einen  zu  bereichern  unter  alien 
Musste  diese  Gotterwelt  vergehn.”* 

3.  Goethe’s  influence  on  the  religious  province  was  much 
more  extensive  and  intense  than  Schiller’s.  He  touched  life  and 
thought  more  deeply,  and  on  more  sides,  was  less  ethical,  yet 
more  universal.  He  conceived  the  perfect  culture  to  be  too 
wide,  too  varied  and  rich,  to  be  based  on  a single  religion,  or 
to  be  realized  by  the  imitation  of  a single  person.  His  own 
ideals  were  Hellenic,  not  Hebrew  ; but  his  Hellenism  was 
not  uniform  or  monotonous — it  was  variously  qualified  and 
enriched.  He  owed  much  to  Mysticism,  much  to  Herder,  and 
much  to  Spinoza  ; they  taught  him  to  read  order  and  unity 
into  nature,  and  he  loved  to  feel  himself  in  harmony  with  the 
life  that  filled  the  universe  and  became  conscious  in  man. 
He  could  not  conceive  spirit  without  matter  or  matter  without 
spirit ; God  and  the  world  stood  together  inseparably.  He 
existing  in  it— it  the  woven  and  flowing  garment  which  at 
once  hid  and  manifef'^ed  His  essence. 

^ “ Briefwechsel  zwischen  Schiller  und  Goethe,”  vol.  i.,  Br,  86,  p.  67 
(ed.  1881). 

2 ••  Die  Gotter  Griechenlands.” 


QUALIFIED  BY  PANTHEISM. 


197 


“Ihm  ziemt’s,  die  Welt  im  Innern  zii  bewegen, 

Natur  in  sich,  sich  in  Natur  zu  hegen.” 

Spinoza  might  be  to  others  Atheus,  but  to  him  he  was 
TJieissinius  et  Chris tianissimus.  From  him  he  learned  what 
he  conceived  to  be  the  fundamental  principle  of  all  religion  : 

He  who  truly  loves  God  must  not  desire  that  God  love  him 
in  return.”  There  was  nothing  he  more  resented  than  Lavater’s 
dilemma : “ Either  Christian  or  Atheist.”  He  held,  on  the 
contrary,  that  it  was  indifferent  what  a man  believed — that  he 
believed  was  everything.  He  would  be  a Christian  in  his  own 
way,  but  in  the  way  of  no  other  person.^  The  ordinary 
categories  were  too  small  for  him  ; he  was  at  once  Polytheist, 
Pantheist,  and  Theist — the  first  as  poet,  the  second  as  interpreter 
of  nature,  the  third  as  moral  being.  God  he  knew  by  seientia 
intuitiva,  and  to  him  blessedness  upon  earth  was  to  acknow- 
ledge God,  wherever  and  however  He  may  reveal  Himself.  So 
he  conceived  Christ  as  one,  but  not  the  sole,  revelation  of  God, 
the  highest  in  the  moral  world,  but  not  so  sufficient  or  ex- 
haustive as  to  be  adequate  alone  ; and  he  described  himself  as 
not  an  unchristian  nor  an  antichristian,  but  as  yet  a decided 
non-christian  ^ — ie.,  he  did  not,  like  the  first,  stand  outside 
Christianity,  nor,  like  the  second,  oppose  it,  nor  did  he  claim  to 
be  all  or  only  what  it  required,  nay,  rather  he  comprehended 
so  much  of  it  as  was  good,  and  much  besides.  So  he  said  to 
Lavater,  “ You  find  nothing  more  beautiful  than  the  Gospel ; I 
find  a thousand  pages  written  by  both  ancient  and  modern 
men,  graciously  endowed  of  God,  quite  as  beautiful  and  useful 
and  necessary  to  mankind.”  He  believed  in  the  aristocracy 
of  the  cultured  rather  than  in  the  monarchy  of  Christ.  So  he 
will  not  allow  His  sole  or  solitary  supremacy  ; he  names  it  un- 
righteous and  robbery  to  pluck  all  the  beautiful  feathers  from 
the  thousands  of  birds  under  heaven  in  order  to  adorn  a single 
bird  of  Paradise.  And  as  he  limits  the  authority  of  Christ, 

' “ Wahrheit  und  Dichtung,”  bk.  xiv. 

* “Briefe  an  Lavater,”  39,  p.  144  (Hirzel). 


198 


CHRIST  AS  THE  BEAUTIFUL  SOUL. 


he  denies  His  miraculous  character  ; an  audible  voice  from 
heaven  would  not  persuade  him  that  water  burned  and  fire 
extinguished,  or  that  a virgin  became  a mother,  or  that  a 
dead  man  rose  again  ; nay  rather,  he  held  such  things  to  be 
blasphemies  against  the  great  God  and  His  revelation  in  nature 
So  he  conceived  Christ  to  be  one  in  a multitude  of  forms  under 
which  God  was  manifested.  Yet  the  God  He  manifested  was 
the  essence  of  His  own  beautiful  soul,  full  of  goodness  and  love.^ 
He  was  therefore  the  highest  in  His  own  order,  the  moral  and 
spiritual.  And  this  determined  his  attitude  to  the  Gospels:  the 
genuine  he  defined  as  the  really  excellent,  that  which  stood  in 
harmony  with  purest  nature  and  reason,  and  contributed  even 
to-day  to  our  highest  development ; the  spurious  was  the 
absurd,  the  hollow,  and  the  stupid,  what  brought  forth  no 
fruit,  at  least  none  that  was  good.  In  this  defined  sense  all 
four  Gospels — though  Mark  and  Luke  were  written  without 
immediate  experience,  and  John  only  in  extreme  age — he  held 
to  be  thoroughly  genuine  ; for  in  them  there  is  the  radiance  of 
a majesty  which  proceeded  from  the  person  of  Christ,  and  which 
was  of  as  Divine  a kind  as  ever  the  Godhead  has  assumed  upon 
the  earth.  Before  this  Christ  he  bowed  in  devoutest  reverence 
as  before  the  Divine  revelation  of  the  highest  principle  of 
morality.^  Hence  Goethe  tended  to  transfer  the  idea  of  the 
true  from  the  supernatural  in  Christ  and  the  historical  in  the 
Gospels  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  in  both,  and  to  these  as  beau- 
tiful and  impressive  yet  natural  creations  of  the  spirit  within 
the  universe.  The  cross  did  not  and  could  not  signify  to  him 
any  act  of  Divine  sacrifice  for  human  redemption,  but  it  grew 
into  a beautiful  symbol  of  self-renunciation,  and  life  through  it. 

“ Und  so  lang  Du  das  nicht  hast, 

Dieses  ' Stirb  und  Werde  1 ’ 

Bist  Du  nur  ein  triiber  Cast 
Auf  der  dunklen  Erde.” 


‘ Eckermann,  “ Gesprache  mit  Goethe,”  ii.  Th.,  p.  199  (ed.  1868). 
2 Ibid.y  iii.  Th.,  p.  255. 


HERDER:  HIS  IDEA  OF  GOD  AND  MAN. 


199 


§ 11. — Historical  Criticism  : Romanticism  and 
Theology. 

I 

But  the  most  potent  influence  in  historical  theology  from 
this  period  and  circle  was  Herder.  He  was,  as  has  been  well 
said,  the  theologian  among  the  classics  and  a classic  among 
the  theologians.^  A many-sided  man,  open,  capable,  sus- 
ceptible on  all  his  sides,  he  touched  and  was  touched  by 
literature  and  art,  philosophy  and  history,  as  well  as  theology, 
and  with  him  to  touch  was  to  quicken  and  to  mould.  His 
idea  of  God  owed  much  to  Spinoza  and  to  Leibnitz ; for  the 
former’s  category  of  substance  he  substituted  the  latter’s 
category  of  force — not  as  material  simply,  but  as  rational 
and  spiritual.  God  was  the  absolutely  active  Being,  physical 
yet  intellectual : “ Die  selbststandigste  Ur-  und  Allkraft,”  “ Der 
Ursprung,  Gegenstand  und  Inbegriff  aller  Erkenntniss.”  ^ 
As  such  God  was  to  nature  no  extra  or  sttpra  ; if  He  did 
not  exist  in  the  world,  then  He  existed  nowhere  ; yet  imma- 
nence did  not  mean  identity  ; God  was  not  the  world,  nor 
was  the  world  God.  He  was  the  highest,  most  living,  most 
active  Existence,  who  had  given  to  His  creatures  what  is 
highest — viz.,  existence,  reality.  He  stood  manifested  alike 
in  nature  and  man,  especially  man  ; yet  these  two  were  so 
related  that  man  could  not  be  understood  save  through 
nature,  or  nature  perfected  save  in  man.  He,  indeed,  is  the 
middle  term  that  unites  two  worlds  ; on  the  one  side  he  is 
rooted  in  the  earth,  on  the  other  he  is  a free  citizen  of  the 
spiritual  and  eternal ; and  in  the  unity  of  his  natural  and 
spiritual  being  we  have  a twofold  revelation  of  God.  The 
God  we  seek  in  nature  is  the  same  as  we  find  in  history, 

^ A.  Werner,  in  Herzog-Plitt,  “ Peal-Ency.,”  vol.  v.,  p.  791. 

2 “ Gott,  einige  Gesprache  iiber  Spinoza’s  System,”  Theok  Werke,  viii. : 
cf.  pp.  148,  176,  246  If.  (Muller’s  ed.).  Herder  set  the  example  of  the  extra- 
vagant praise  of  Spinoza  which  became  a sort  of  7node  in  the  Romanticist 
School.  Schleiermacher’s  famous  tribute,  “ Dem  Heiligen  Spinoza,”  and 
Novalis’  much-quoted  “ Gottertrunkener  Mensch,”  are  but  echoes  of  him. 


200 


HUMANITY  AND  CHRIST. 


and  the  greatest  person  in  history  is  the  unique  Son  of  God 
because  the  pre-eminent  Son  of  man.  The  Divine  element 
in  our  race  is  the  culture  of  humanity ; to  it  every  great  and 
good  man,  every  lawgiver,  discoverer,  philosopher,  poet,  artist, 
every  noble  man  in  his  rank  and  place,  in  the  education  of 
his  family,  in  the  fulfilment  of  his  duties,  by  example,  deed, 
and  word — has  contributed.  Humanity  is  so  great  that  he 
knows  no  nobler  word  to  define  and  describe  man  than  simply 
man  himself.  This  was  explicated  in  religion,  which  was  like 
a holy  triangle  whose  several  angles  were  poetry,  philosophy, 
and  religion  ; or  she  was  like  a goddess,  and  these  repre- 
sented the  priest  of  her  temple,  the  prophets  who  revealed 
her  truth,  the  providence  that  exhibited  her  actions.  Religion, 
then,  is  the  realized  idea  of  humanity,  Christ  its  highest 
embodiment.  His  religion  the  purest  humanity  reached  in 
the  purest  way.  Humanity  is  what  He  proved  in  His  life 
and  confirmed  by  His  death.  What  His  few  words  witness 
to  is  the  truest  humanity.  To  this  religion  of  humanity  He 
consecrated  His  life;  in  His  heart  it  was  written,  “God  is 
My  Father,  Father  of  all  men,  and  all  men  are  brothers.”^ 
Herder  emphasized,  like  Lessing,  the  distinction  between 
the  religion  of  Christ  and  the  religion  built  on  and  round 
Christ ; and  in  order  to  reach  both  it  and  Him  his  cry  was, 
“Study  the  sources,  back  to  the  original  documents.”^  He 
was  pre-eminently  a Biblical  theologian  ; the  Bible  was  to 
him  Divine  because  it  was  the  most  human  of  books,  written 
by  men  for  man  ; and  the  man  who  would  read  it  must  be 
inspired  by  it,  possessed  of  a new  sense,  a new  feeling  for 
the  greatness  of  its  contents.  Lessing’s  dictum — revelation  is 
education — he  translates  into  this  more  concrete  form  : revela- 

^ “ Ideen  zur  Philos,  der  Gesch.  der  Menschheit.”  Cf.  bks.  iv.,  v.,  xv., 
xvii.,  and  “ Von  Religion,  Lehrmeinungen  und  Gebrauchen,”  especially 
sect  ii. 

^ “ Briefe,  das  Studium  der  Theologie  betreffende,”  pts.  i.  and  ii.  These 
letters  are  in  the  best  sense  modern  : the  first  part  concerns  the  study  of 
the  Old,  the  second  of  the  New,  Testament. 


REVELATION  AND  RELIGION. 


20 


tion  is  the  mother,  reason  is  the  daughter."^  Neither  can  take 
the  other’s  place,  supersede  or  be  superseded.  Revelation,  so 
construed,  is  of  course  neither  co-extensive  nor  identical  with 
a book,  but  represents  the  action  of  God  in,  on,  and  through 
man  in  history.  It  had,  as  it  were,  been  immanent  in  man 
from  the  beginning  ; not  indeed  as  compacted  or  articulated 
or  finished  knowledge,  but  as  a form  or  faculty  underlying  all 
ideas  of  the  reason,  the  feeling  for  the  invisible  in  the  visible, 
the  one  in  the  many,  the  cause  in  the  effects.  But  to  educe 
this  feeling  and  translate  natural  into  Divine  revelation,  God 
sends  select  spirits,  men  who  as  His  organs  become  the 
guardian  angels  of  our  race,  with  their  spirit  outshining  and 
illuminating  centuries,  with  their  hearts  embracing  nations, 
with  their  giant  power  exalting  them  even  against  their  wills. 
The  process  which  effected  the  revelation  was  inspiration, 
which  was  no  frenzy  or  demoniac  passion,  but  illumination, 
the  reason  so  awakened  and  clarified  that  it  can  see  God  face 
to  face,  speak  with  the  God  it  sees  and  tell  man  what  it  has 
seen  and  heard.  The  revelation  that  comes  to  man  comes 
through  him  by  exaltation  of  all  his  faculties.  “ He  who 
formed  the  eye,  must  He  blind  it  in  order  that  we  may  see  ? 
The  Spirit  who  breathed  the  breath  of  life  into  creation,  and 
who  quickens  all  our  powers,  shall  He  destroy  them  in  order 
that  He  may  in  their  place  kindle  in  us  light?”  But  what 
has  so  come  to  educate  man  by  revealing  the  immanent  God 
man  must  ever  anew  enter  into,  that  he  may  be  educated 
and  exalted  more  and  more.  The  Schoolman,  the  Churchman, 
the  system-builder,  have  obscured,  have  even  lost,  the  Bible ; 
we  must  go  back  to  it  as  men,  read  it  as  the  book  at  once 
of  the  poetry  and  the  religion  of  humanity.  It  is  Oriental, 
and  needs  imagination  and  heart  for  its  interpretation.  For 
Anselm’s  “ Believe,  that  you  may  know,”  Herder  substituted 
“ Love,  that  you  may  understand,”  for  love  quickens  intelli- 
gence and  appreciation.  What  men  have  taken  as  a prosaic 

‘ “ Briefe,  das  Studium  der  Theologie  betreffende,”  pt.  iii.,  Bre.  26,  27. 


202 


RELIGION  AND  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT. 


or  matter-of-fact  record  of  the  manner  of  making  the  world, 
is  a Divine  poem,  which  introduces,  as  it  were,  the  drama  of 
God’s  action  in  history,  educating  man  by  means  of  special 
peoples.  The  actors  in  this  drama  are  persons,  but  the  force 
that  moves  them  is  God.  To  Herder  sacred  history  is  not 
true  because  it  is  miraculous,  but  because  it  is  and  works  for 
good  ; yet  the  miracle  has  its  place,  “the  three  luminous 
points  of  a heavenly  attestation  of  the  Anointed  of  God  ” 
are  the  Baptism,  the  Transfiguration,  and  the  Resurrection. 
Since  he  so  conceived  the  history  he  was  bound  to  consider 
the  literature.  His  attitude  to  the  Gospels  was  significant 
and  characteristic.  The  oldest  was  Mark,  an  anticipation  of 
our  latest  criticism,  more  instructive  for  its  reasons  than  in 
itself ; the  second  was  the  lost  Gospel  of  the  Hebrews,  and 
these  together  were  the  two  sources  used  by  Luke  ; while  our 
Matthew  was  a free  translation  of  the  Hebrew  source  with 
some  omissions  and  additions.  In  John  we  had  an  echo  of 
the  older  Gospels  in  a higher  tone  it  was  the  Gospel  of  the 
spirit  and  the  truth.  Its  speculative  and  constructive  purpose 
makes  John’s  the  most  permanent,  the  most  modern,  the 
most  instructive  of  all  the  Gospels. 

Our  purpose  is  simply  historical,  and  our  expositions  are 
too  brief  to  warrant  criticism.  But  Herder’s  defects  and 
excellences  are  alike  obvious.  He  enlarged  the  outlook  of 
the  theologian,  filled  theology  with  human  interest  by  inviting 
it  to  occupy  the  whole  field  of  human  history,  bound  all 
its  great  ideas  to  great  persons  and  tendencies.  He  lifted 

* “Regel  der  Zusammenstimmung  uns.  Evang.,”  Werke:  zur  Rel.  u. 
Theol.,  vol  xii.,  pp.  54,  55.  The  discussions  on  the  Gospels  in  vols.  xi.  and 
xii.  are  not  without  their  interest  even  now.  It  is  wonderful  how  Herder’s 
literary  insight  kept  him  right  when  more  skilled  critics  went  astray.  In  all 
that  pertains  to  external  criticism  he  is  long  out  of  date,  but  in  internal  he  is 
still  suggestive.  His  position  is  : the  Gospel  existed  before  the  Gospels  ; 
they  are  but  a written  echo  of  the  oldest  common  tradition,  and  he  sets 
himself  through  their  internal  characteristics  and  differences  to  explain  their 
origin,  order,  and  purpose.  He  has  most  affinity  with  John,  whose  use  of 
miracles  as  “ symbolical  facts”  was  altogether  to  his  mind. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  CRITICISM. 


203 


religion  out  of  the  hands  of  the  ecclesiastics,  placed  it  above 
and  beyond  as  well  as  within  all  the  Churches,  and  made  the 
ideas  of  God  and  man  approximate  and  even  touch.  He 
vivified  the  Bible,  changed  it  from  a dead  and  closed  to  a 
living  and  open  book  ; he  compelled  dogma  to  return  to  its 
source,  and  there  dissolve  its  hardened  terminology  in  order 
that  it  might  crystallize  into  truer  and  more  perfect  forms. 
He  showed  that  to  approach  Jesus  through  history  was  to 
make  Him  a more  real,  more  living,  more  universal  figure, 
and  that  to  construe  Him  was  to  be  forced  to  deal  with  the 
Gospels  as  histories  and  as  literature.  But  his  work  was 
scattered,  diffuse,  thrown  out  in  fragments  and  on  occasions, 
was  rhetorical,  imaginative,  and,  where  it  touched  theology, 
it  was  full  of  the  intuitions  of  genius,  but  without  the  archi- 
tectonic of  the  reason.  Yet  where  he  was  weak  the  philosophy 
he  did  his  best  to  criticize  was  strong  ; not,  indeed,  so  much 
in  itself  as  in  what  it  caused  to  be. 

§ HI. — Philosophy  and  Historical  Criticism. 

Philosophy  exercised  on  theology  a far  more  powerful 
influence  than  either  literature  or  history.  There  has  been 
since  the  Platonic  period  no  more  splendid  or  fruitful  cycle  in 
speculation  than  that  which  begins  with  Kant  and  ends  with 
Hegel,  or  one  more  governed  by  religious  ideas  and  problems. 
Each  of  the  transcendental  philosophies  involved  a speculative 
Christology,  and  it  was  the  attempt  to  apply  the  last  and 
greatest  of  these  to  the  history  of  Christ  that  resulted  in  the 
birth  of  modern  criticism.  We  must  therefore  come  to  it 
through  them ; not,  indeed,  with  the  minute  exposition  and 
illustrative  detail  that  would  be  necessary  were  we  writing 
a history  of  religious  thought,  but  with  the  utmost  possible 
brevity. 

I.  In  England  philosophy  and  theology  have  stood  to  each 
other  in  very  different  relations  from  those  which  they  have 
sustained  in  Germany.  Here  they  have  affected  one  another 


204 


PHILOSOPHY  DETERMINES  TIIEOLOGY. 


more  as  antagonists  than  as  allies.  Hobbes  had  no  place  for 
religion  in  his  system  save  as  a legalized  superstition,  whose 
source  was  the  belief  in  witchcraft  and  in  ghosts.  Locke  was 
the  parent  of  English  Rationalism  and  Deism  ; his  empiricism 
could  not  but  tempt  men  to  strip  religion  of  all  its  mysteries, 
in  order  that  it  might  be  reconciled  to  a reason  emptied  of 
all  transcendental  contents.  Hume  had  but  to  use  Locke 
as  modified  by  Berkeley  in  order  to  evolve  a scepticism  so 
universal  that  it  did  not  spare  even  the  ego.  The  Mills,  father 
and  son,  inherited  their  full  share  of  the  impotences  and 
aversions  of  our  insular  empiricism  ; and  though  it  has  in 
Spencer  changed  its  terminology,  and  even  boldly  essayed 
to  become  constructive,  yet  it  remains  at  heart  what  it  has 
ever  been  ; for  Agnosticism  is  just  scepticism  become  too 
proud  or  too  perverse  to  confess  to  its  own  real  nature.  And 
so  our  traditional  philosophy  has  either  attempted  to  explain 
religion  out  of  existence  as  a congeries  of  illicit  or  fictitious 
ideas,  or  it  has  presented  theology  with  the  problem  which 
produced  the  distinctive  apologetics  of  the  eighteenth  century 
— how  to  get  religion  into  a mind  which  has  no  religious 
constitution  or  contents.  If  men  would  be  religious  under 
such  a philosophy  it  must  be  by  the  help  of  some  external 
authority  which  supplies  them  with  a faith  and  becomes  the 
guarantee  of  its  truth.  Tlie  theological  evolution  of  such 
philosophy  was  seen  in  Newman,  the  speculative  in  Hume 
and  the  Mills. 

But  the  tendency  in  Germany  has  been  exactly  the  opposite. 
It  has  started  with  the  transcendental  in  mind,  and  has 
laboured  to  discover  the  transcendental  in  nature  and  history. 
The  endeavour  has  been  either  to  sublime  philosophy  into 
theology,  or  to  make  the  two  so  interpenetrate  as  to  become 
one  ; at  least  the  goal  of  all  its  strivings  has  been  the  specu- 
lative and  positive  interpretation  of  our  religious  ideas  and 
their  historical  forms.  And,  as  a consequence,  the  ambition 
of  the  greater  German  philosophers  has  been  to  be  speculative 


WITH  KANT  RELIGION  IS  MORALITY. 


205 


theologians,  and  of  the  theologians  to  be  constructive  philo- 
sophers ; in  the  one  case  the  philosophical  thought  has  become 
religious,  in  the  other  the  religious  has  aspired  to  be  philo- 
sophical. And  so  every  speculative  has  had  its  corresponding 
theological  tendency  and  crisis.  Leibnitz  and  Wolff  made  the 
theologians  of  the  eighteenth  century  ; were,  indeed,  themselves 
so  eminent  theologians  that  the  philosophy  of  the  one  culmi- 
nated in  a Theodicee^  of  the  other  in  a Theologia  Natui'alis. 
Kant  created  Rohr  and  Wegscheider  ; Jacobi  and  Schelling 
contributed  to  form  Schleiermacher ; Daub  and  Marheineke 
made  theology  Hegelian  in  matter  and  method ; Strauss 
was  more  a philosophical  than  a theological  nursling  ; while 
all  the  phases  of  the  neo-Kantian  and  the  neo-Hegelian 
philosophies  have  reproduced  themselves  in  theology.  Hence 
this  relation  of  the  speculative  to  the  religious  criticism  must 
never  be  left  out  of  sight. 

2.  The  earlier  phases  of  German  Transcendentalism  which 
begin  with  Kant  and  end  with  Fichte,  hardly  concern  us. 
In  the  region  of  religion  Kant  could  not  be  said  to  have 
been  really  waked  out  of  his  dogmatic  slumbers.  He  re- 
mained where  the  eighteenth  century  placed  him,  content 
to  conceive  religion  very  much  in  the  manner  and  form  of 
the  current  Rationalism.  Hence  he  did  not  directly  accomplish 
in  the  religious  sphere  anything  like  the  revolution  he  accom- 
plished in  the  philosophical.  The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason 
tended  indeed  to  paralyze  theology ; according  to  it  no  real 
science  of  God  was  possible.  The  super-sensuous,  as  lying 
outside  experience,  lay  outside  knowledge.  But  the  God 
the  pure  reason  abolished  the  practical  restored.  Kant  was 
an  ethical  Theist,  God  was  the  centre  of  his  moral  system, 
and  his  categorical  imperative  made  Deity  a new  power  for 
the  conscience  of  his  time.  Religion  became  a mere  vehicle 
of  morality,  the  knowledge  of  our  duties  as  Divine  com- 
mands. The  value  of  Christianity  depended  on  the  purity  of 
its  moral  spirit,  that  again  on  the  person  of  its  Founder  Hi«: 


2o6 


DOGMATIC  IS  MORALIZED. 


historical  character  was  important  only  so  far  as  it  exhibited 
a humanity,  which,  as  realizing  the  Divine  ideal  of  man, 
was  well  pleasing  to  God.  This  ideal  was  eternal,  the  only- 
begotten  Son  of  God,  no  created  thing,  but  proceeding  out 
of  His  essence.  His  express  image,  and  so  in  His  mind  as  to 
be  for  ever  before  Him,  His  delight,  on  account  of  which 
He  made  and  now  loves  the  world.  Since  this  ideal  so  lives 
in  God,  men  did  not  create  it,  but  it  descended  from  heaven 
in  order  to  incorporation  in  man,  and  in  its  union  with  us  it 
may  be  represented  as  the  Son  of  God  in  a state  of  humi- 
liation. Such  a descent  and  humiliation  do  not  imply  the 
occasional  being  of  the  ideal  or  the  miraculous  being  of  the 
man  who  embodies  it,  since  the  ideal  is  implicit  in  the  moral 
nature  of  the  normal  man.  But  the  man  who  does  realize  it 
becomes  a type  generative  of  a higher  humanity  by  virtue  both 
of  the  character  He  presents  for  our  contemplation  and  the 
society  of  like-minded  persons  He  institutes.  Incarnation  in 
the  Kantian  sense  was  simply  the  personalization  of  the  moral 
ideal,  and  the  Church  a society  to  help  towards  its  realization. 
Christ,  by  embodying  this  ideal,  showed  us  what  God  had 
created  man  to  be  ; and  by  founding  the  Church  He  created 
an  ethical  society,  or  kingdom  of  God,  which  was  meant  to 
train  man  for  a reign  of  pure  reason,  and  for  a morality 
under  a God  who  is  all  in  all.  Christ  is,  as  it  were,  the 
symbol  of  religion  thus  embodied,  duty  apprehended  as  the 
Divine  will  and  His  Church  is  an  institute  for  the  culti- 
vation of  personal  virtues,  or  for  helping  to  create  men  of 
a similar  type  to  its  Founder.  That  exhausts  His  and  its 
significance  for  man. 

3.  Jacobi  marks  a reaction  against  the  Kantian  criticism  ; 

^ For  Kant’s  construction  of  Christianity  see,  in  particular,  his  “ Religion 
innerh.  der  Grenzen  der  blossen  Vernunft.”  This  may  be  described  as  a 
translation  of  Christian  dogmatics  into  the  terms  of  a moral  Rationalism.  It 
is  curious  to  see  how  doctrines  like  Original  Sin,  Satisfaction,  the  Trinity, 
the  Church,  can,  by  deft  manipulation,  be  made  into  the  empirical  modes 
and  agencies  by  which  a transcendental  morality  may  be  realized. 


JACOBI  AND  FICHTE. 


207 


Fichte  a development  of  its  subjective  idealism.  For  Jacobi 
belief,  not  knowledge,  was  ultimate.^  God  was  reached  by 
intuition,  by  the  heart.  The  issues  of  the  critical  philosophy 
were  escaped  by  denying  the  right  of  the  reason  to  be  either 
the  critic  or  the  architect  of  faith.  Faith  was  saved  by  ex- 
cluding reason  from  religion  ; yet  not  so  much  saved  as  lost. 
For  Jacobi  confessed  that,  while  with  the  heart  a Christian,  he 
was  with  the  understanding  a heathen,  and  so  swam  between 
two  streams,  borne  up  by  the  one,  but  sinking  continually  in 
the  other.  Just  because  he  shrank  from  every  attempt  to 
express  or  represent  God,  he  could  not  allow  any  absolute 
worth  to  historical  Christianity.  The  anthropomorphic  was 
the  idolatrous  ; Christ  as  the  God-man  was  not  so  much  the 
creator  as  the  creation  of  faith.  Whatever  indeed  could  be 
regarded  as  Divine,  and  as  such  calculated  to  awaken  man  to 
virtue  and  a Divine  life,  might  be  represented  under  the  image 
and  by  the  name  of  Christ.  But  it  was  only  the  inner  and 
ideal  Christ  that  could  be  so  used  ; any  attempt  to  transfer 
such  an  idea  to  the  historical  was  religious  materialism,  the 
humiliation  of  reason  and  morality  by  idolatry.^ 

4.  Fichte’s  earlier  system,  egoistic  Pantheism  as  it  was,  had 
this  great  worth  for  German  religious  thought — a pure  and 
exalted  morality  was  its  centre  and  end.  Man  lived  to  be 
moral  ; the  world  existed  as  an  arena  on  which  his  being  could 
realize  its  moral  ends.  These  implied  a living  and  active  moral 
order,  which  was  the  only  God  we  needed  or  could  conceive — 
an  ordo  ordinans^  not  an  ordo  ordinatus.  Religion  is  faith  in  the 
reality  of  such  an  order  or  law.  To  do  every  moment  what  duty 
commands, without  doubt  or  speculation  as  to  consequences,  was 

^ “ Idealismus  und  Realismus/’  Werke,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  124  ff.,  especially 
pp.  156-163.  Cf.  “ Einleitung,”  which  is  for  Jacobi  a rather  sober  exposition 
of  his  philosophical  principles.  But  even  more  characteristic  is  his  discussion, 
“ Ueber  eine  Weissagung  Lichtenberg’s,”  the  said  prophecy  being:  “ Our 
world  will  yet  become  so  superfine  that  it  will  be  quite  as  ridiculous  to 
believe  in  God  as  it  is  now  to  believe  in  ghosts.” 

^ “Von  den  Gottlich.  Diugen,”  Werke,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  285,  286, 


208 


THE  INCARNATION  ETERNAL. 


the  true  faith  ; its  opposite  was  Atheism.  From  this  doctrine 
it  followed  that,  since  the  order  was  realized  in  and  through 
men,  then  in  the  man  who  completely  surrendered  himself 
to  the  order,  and  embodied  it,  God  Himself  was  individualized 
or  incarnated,  the  Eternal  Word  became  flesh.  But  Fichte  later 
developed  a more  objective  theistic  idealism,  which  involved 
a corresponding  change  in  his  historical  doctrine.^  It  was 
characteristic  that  for  him  John’s  was  the  only  real  Christ. 
Paul,  who  supplanted  John,  remained  always  half  a Jew.'*^ 
Now,  the  essential  note  of  the  Johannean  Christ  was  this — 
God  was  conceived  not  as  abstract  or  absolute  being  {Sem),  but 
as  conditioned  {Dasein)  ; consciousness,  revelation,  knowledge, 
was  of  the  essence  of  God.  The  idea  of  a creative  act  is 
a fundamental  error,  the  idea  of  the  eternal  consciousness 
the  standard  of  all  religious  truth.  John  does  not  say,  “ In 
the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth,”  but, 
“ In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was  God,” 
?>.,  consciousness  or  revelation  is  eternal,  and  the  eternal  being 
of  the  Word  is  the  eternal  being  of  man,  or  of  the  incarnation 
of  God,  i.e.,  the  eternal  unity  of  the  Divine  and  human,  which 
is  the  innermost  essence  of  religion.  In  the  person  of  Jesus, 
and  in  a manner  belonging  to  no  other  man,  the  eternal  ap- 
peared in  time,  God  became  incarnate  ; but  the  radical  matter 
is  the  eternal  significance,  not  the  temporal  appearance. 
Fichte’s  cardinal  principle  is,  only  the  metaphysical,  not  the  his- 
torical sense  saves  ^ ; the  latter  may  instruct  the  intellect,  the 
former  alone  redeems  the  soul.  And  the  metaphysical  sense 
into  which  he  construed  the  historical  Person  was  this  : in  His 
real  and  whole  being  He  is  the  greatest  miracle  in  the  whole 
course  of  creation.  It  is  true  that  He  has  both  appeared  in 
time  and  been  generated  out  of  God  from  eternity  ; but  mathe- 
matics and  philosophy  have  also  both  alike  issued  out  of  God 

1 “Die  Anweisung  zum  Seligen  Leben,”  Werke,  vol.  v.,  pp.  476-491. 

* “ Die  Grundziige  des  gegenwart.  Zeitalters,”  Werke,  vol.  vii.,  p.  99. 
Cf.  vol.  V.,  p.  477- 

3 Werke,  vol.  v.,  p.  485. 


SCHELLING’S  speculative  CHRISTIANITY. 


209 


and  been  in  God  from  eternity.  And  Christ’s  appearance 
was  a necessity  to  the  order  of  the  world  and  of  history  ; 
grant  law  to  be  in  history,  and  within  its  being  His  was 
necessarily  involved.  Without  Him  the  system  could  not  be 
realized,  or  man  attain  his  end  as  a religious  being.  Religion 
was  conceived  as  the  union  of  God  and  the  soul,  and  Jesus  as 
the  great  miracle  in  the  field  of  humanity,  because  the  first 
to  realize  this  unity.  By  a Divine  genius  He  was  what  He 
was — personalized  religion.  He  was  historically  necessary,  for 
all  who  attain  unity  with  God  do  it  through  Him.  In  every 
one  who  does  so  the  Logos  becomes  incarnate. 

§ IV. — Philosophy  and  the  Incarnation  : Schelling. 

Philosophical  interpretations  and  reconstructions  of  Chris- 
tianity were  thus  familiar  to  German  Transcendentalism  even 
in  its  earlier  and  subjective  phases.  But  they  become  much 
more  characteristic  of  its  later  and  objective.  Religion,  as 
the  highest  manifestation  of  spirit,  became  its  final  problem. 
Schelling  inaugurated  the  change,  led  philosophy  from 
subject  to  object,  from  mind  to  nature,  from  knowing  to 
being.  He  passed  through  so  many  phases  that  it  is  difficult 
to  seize  and  exhibit  his  precise  significance  for  our  history. 
But  his  changes  only  increase  his  importance,  show  philo- 
sophy becoming  ever  more  conscious  of  mind  as  the  root 
of  the  universe,  of  religion  as  an  essential  characteristic  and 
product  of  spirit.  For  us  two  things  are  important  : first, 
his  doctrine  of  the  Absolute,  and  his  consequent  notion  of 
history  ; and,  secondly,  the  way  in  which  he  combined  these 
into  a speculative  construction  of  historical  Christianity. 
The  first  involved  a new  conception  of  God  and  the  world 
and  their  relation  to  each  other.  His  idea  of  the  absolute 
was,  on  the  negative  side,  a doctrine  of  indifference,  denial 
of  the  antithesis  between  subject  and  object ; on  the  posi- 
tive side  it  was  a doctrine  of  identity,  the  affirmation  that 

H 


210 


THE  UNIVERSE  IS  A HISTORY 


whatever  is,  is  within,  not  without,  the  Absolute.  It  was 
thus  not  abstract,  dead,  but  concrete,  living.  Nature  and 
spirit,  like  Spinoza’s  modes  of  expansion  and  thought,  were 
the  co-ordinate  forms  in  which  the  Absolute  Identity  ap- 
peared ; they  were  by  a ceaseless  self-generation  or  birth 
of  the  Divine  Essence.  History,  as  the  field  in  which  spirit 
is  revealed  and  realized,  becomes  the  revelation  and  realiza- 
tion of  God.  By  this  idea  two  things  seemed  to  be  ac- 
complished ; the  dualism  which  had  been  the  basis  of  the 
eighteenth-century  thought,  and  which  survived  in  the  anti- 
thesis of  the  pure  and  practical  reason  with  Kant,  was  over- 
come ; and  religion  ceased  to  be  confined  to  the  moral 
relations  of  man  and  God,  and,  as  posited  in  their  respective 
natures,  was  necessarily  identical  and  co-extensive  with  their 
reasoned  co-existence. 

From  this  point  of  view  Schelling  attempted  a speculative 
construction  of  Christianity,  which  was  destined  to  exercise 
extraordinary  influence  on  the  most  dissimilar  phases  and 
schools  of  thought — critical,  catholic,  and  evangelical.  ^ 
Theology  he  conceived  as  “ the  highest  synthesis  of  philo- 
sophical and  historical  knowledge,”  and  its  positive  function 
was  “ the  historical  construction  of  Christianity.”  The  funda- 
mental characteristic  of  Christianity  was  that  it  represented 
the  universe  as  history,  as  a moral  kingdom,  and  so  stood  in 
antithesis  to  the  ancient  religions  : in  other  words,  they  knew 

^ “ Die  Methode  des  academischen  Studiums,”  Vorlesn.,  viii.  and  ix. ; 
Werke,  vol.  v.,  pp.  286-305.  Schelling’s  construction  affected  Strauss 
through  Hegel;  through  Hegel  and  Schleiermacher,  Moehlerand  the  Catholic 
Hegelians,  the  former  elaborating  it  into  his  doctrine  of  the  Church  as  a 
continued  incarnation  ; through  Moehler  it  influenced  the  later  Anglicans  ; 
and  in  the  latest  phase  of  the  Anglican  theology,  which  has  been,  of  all 
modern  theologies,  the  most  changeful,  it  has,  developed  by  the  partially 
assimilated  philosophy  of  Green,  assumed  for  a while  a more  pronounced, 
though  not  a very  coherent,  form.  Its  basis  is  Pantheistic ; its  history 
properly  begins  with  Spinoza.  It  is  significant  that  just  where  neo- 
platonism agrees  with  German  Transcendentalism  it  inclines  to  a similar 
theory,  which  shows  its  presence  in  a few  sporadic  texts  in  certain 
Alexandrian  Fathers. 


WHICH  CULMINATES  IN  THE  INCARNATION. 


21 1 


a Fate  ; it  knows  a Providence.  In  Hellenism  nature  revealed 
God,  but  in  Christianity  man  revealed  Him  ; and  the  two 
systems  were  related  as  nature  and  spirit.  As  the  sphere  of 
nature  is  space,  so  the  field  of  history  is  time,  and  every  parti- 
cular element  or  force  (moment)  of  time  is  the  revelation  of  a 
particular  side  of  God,  in  every  one  of  which  He  is  absolute. 
In  nature  God  is,  as  it  were,  exoteric — the  ideal  appears 
through  another  than  itself ; but  in  the  ideal  world,  therefore 
pre-eminently  in  history.  He  lays  aside  the  veil,  appears  in 
His  own  proper  quality  as  spirit,  and  His  kingdom  comes. 
Now  the  difference  of  the  natural  and  historical  is  seen  in 
their  supreme  acts.  Greek  religion  was  essentially  the 
apotheosis  of  nature,  but  the  Christian  is  the  incarnation 
of  God  ; and  each  result  is  reached  by  a reverse  process  : 
Hellenism  deified  nature  and  placed  man  on  its  summit ; 
but  Christianity,  as  it  were,  humanized  God.  By  apotheosis 
man  is  magnified  ; but  by  incarnation  the  finite,  in  the  very 
act  and  moment  as  it  were  of  its  highest  dignity,  is  sacri- 
ficed, overcome  by  being  freely  and  personally  surrendered 
and  reconciled  to  the  Infinite.  These  two  ideas  distinguish 
the  old  world  and  the  new.  “ The  first  idea  of  Christianity 
is  necessarily  the  incarnated  God,  Christ  as  apex  and 
end  of  the  ancient  world  of  the  gods.”  But  while  the  idea 
has  an  historical  beginning,  embodiment  in  a single  Person, 
yet  it  represents  an  eternal  and  universal  truth,  and  must  be 
construed  as  such.  What  He  expresses  has  its  symbolic 
and  ideal  being  continued  in  the  Church,  but  its  real  or 
essential  in  colleetive  man.  Round  its  idea  the  Church  has 
allowed  a mythology  to  gather,  which  may  have  been  needed 
as  a body  for  the  preservation  of  the  soul — viz.,  the  idea  ; 
but  philosophy  translates  the  empirical  form  into  this  universal 
truth  : “ The  Eternal  Son  of  God,  born  from  the  essence  of 
the  Father  of  all  things,  is  the  finite  itself  as  it  exists  in 
the  eternal  intuition  of  God,  appearing  as  a suffering  God, 
subjected  to  the  fatalities  of  time ; and  this  God,  in  the 


212  THE  PERSONAL  MUST  HEAL  THE  PERSONAL. 

moment  of  His  appearance  in  Christ,  ends  the  world  of 
finitude  and  opens  that  of  infinitude,  or  of  the  dominion 
of  the  Spirit.”  ^ The  universalism  of  this  truth  is  confirmed 
by  the  presence  of  the  idea  in  religions  before  and  without 
the  Christian,  yet  in  forms  that  may  be  termed  immanent — 
as  really  present,  though  imperfectly  realized — and  prophetic, 
as  looking  towards  a more  perfect  realization.  And  as 
universal  it  is  eternal,  and  so  independent  of  all  questions 
as  to  whether  certain  books  be  genuine  or  spurious,  or  certain 
histories  are  real  or  imagined.  Christianity,  as  speculative 
and  transcendental,  must  never  be  confounded  with  a series 
of  empirical  facts. 

Schelling  six  years  later  introduced  some  modifying 
elements  into  his  speculative  construction,  laying  a new 
emphasis  on  the  need  of  redeeming  personal  freedom  from 
personal  evil.^  The  spirit  has  its  Iliad,  its  tale  of  struggle 
with  brutal  and  natural  forces,  and  then  its  Odyssey,  when 
out  of  its  painful  wanderings  it  returns  to  the  Infinite. 
This  is  accomplished  by  a double  act : on  the  one  side,  of 
revelation — God  shows  His  heart,  which  is  love;  on  the  other 
side,  of  discovery — man  sees  it,  and  surrenders  freely  his 
particular  to  the  universal  will.  But  in  order  to  this  a 
Mediator  in  human  form  is  necessary.  “ For  only  the 
personal  can  heal  the  personal,  and  God  must  become  man 
in  order  that  man  may  come  again  to  God.”^  He  becomes 
man  in  the  archetypal  Divine  Man,  who  as  in  the  beginning 
with  God  is  by  His  nature  the  highest  peak  or  apex  of  the 
Divine  revelation.  By  this  Man  nature  is  transfigured  to  spirit 
and  God  becomes  a personal  and  intelligent  Being.  But  who 
is  this  archetypal  Man  ? It  can  only  be  Christ,  but  Christ 
conceived  not  as  an  individual,  but  as  universal,  ideal  man  ; 
what  is  true  only  of  collective  humanity  cannot  be  limited  to 

^ Werke,  vol.  v.,  p.  294. 

- “Philos.  Untersucliungen  iib.  das  Wesen  der  menschl.  Freiheit, ” 
Werke,  vol.  vii.,  pp.  331  ff. 

® Ibid.^  p.  380. 


THE  HEALED  CONTINUE  THE  INCARNATION. 


213 


the  historical  individual,  though  without  this  individual  the 
truth  could  not  have  come  to  be  or  to  be  known.  To  con- 
ceive and  embrace  the  ideal  principle  is  to  be  incorporated 
with  Christ,  to  be  of  His  community,  realizing  His  unity  of 
nature  and  spirit,  participant,  as  it  were,  in  His  incarnation. 
His  history  thus  ceases  to  be  single  and  empirical,  and 
becomes  universal,  the  history  of  a Divine  Spirit  so  incorpo- 
rating itself  with  humanity  as  to  organize  it  into  a great  body 
whose  head  is  Christ.  History  conceived  from  this  point 
becomes  in  consequence  of  Christ,  as  it  were,  the  progressive 
incarnation  of  God. 

The  theory  of  the  Freiheitslehre  was  by  no  means  Schelling’s 
last  endeavour  in  this  direction,  and  while  growing  more 
mystical  he  also  grew  more  Biblical.  As  his  thought  ripened 
the  personal  element  became  more  essential  to  religion,  and 
so  he  conceived  in  a more  natural  way  the  historical  side  of 
Christianity.  He  persisted  indeed  in  construing  religious  1 
doctrines  as  philosophical  principles,  and  in  treating  Chris- 
tianity as  the  exoteric  form  of  his  esoteric  transcendental 
theosophy.  But  his  tendency  remained  throughout  the  same. 
God  and  man  were  not  so  conceived  as  to  exclude  each 
other.  Divine  life  was  seen  active  everywhere.  Providence 
ruled  human  history.  Nature  and  man  were  penetrated  with 
God.  Religion  was  not  opposed  to  morality,  or  made  a 
lower  and  more  childish  form  of  it,  but  treated  as  the  most 
splendid  and  perfect  flower  of  the  human  spirit.  It  was  not 
given  to  Schelling  either  in  his  brilliant  youth  or  in  his  sober 
age  to  read  the  riddle  of  the  universe,  but  certainly  he  was 
one  of  the  men  who  have  helped  man  nearer  to  it. 

§ V.— Philosophy  and  Historical  Christianity  : 

Hegel. 

But  now  we  come  to  the  man  and  the  philosophy  which 
were  by  far  the  greatest  formative  and  reformative  forces  in 
theology.  It  were  folly  to  attempt  to  interpret  Hegel  in  a 


214 


HEGEL  AND  MODERN  THEOLOGY. 


paragraph  or  two  ; but  it  were  still  greater  folly  to  attempt  to 
understand  modern  movements  in  theology  without  him,  espe- 
cially those  that  circle  round  the  history  and  person  of  Christ. 
It  is  certain  at  least  that  without  him  we  should  never  have 
had  the  “ Leben  Jesu  ” of  Strauss,  and  without  it  all  our  modern 
developments  in  theology  would  have  been  different.  There 
may  be  room  for  doubt  as  to  whether  Strauss  understood 
Hegel,  or  made  a logical  application  of  his  principles,  but 
there  can  be  none  as  to  his  having  learned  in  the  school  of 
Hegel  the  principles  he  attempted  to  apply.  The  Hegelians 
of  the  right  and  centre  tried  to  disown  the  distinguished 
member  of  the  left  whose  revolutionary  radicalism  threatened 
the  school  with  disgrace  and  dissolution,  but  he  defied  their 
efforts  and  made  good  his  claim  to  rank  as  a representative, 
though  the  side  he  represented  was  almost  the  antipodes  of 
theirs.  Strauss  was,  as  it  were,  the  Frankenstein  of  the 
Hegelian  philosophy.  The  master  was  sacrificed  to  the 
disciple  in  fear  rather  than  in  fairness,  and  has  not  even 
yet  emerged  from  the  eclipse  caused  by  the  man  that  seemed 
his  most  characteristic  child. 

With  Hegel’s  philosophy  as  a whole  we  have  here  no  concern, 
only  with  its  construction  of  the  person  and  history  of  Christ. 
This,  indeed,  was  fundamental  to  it,  of  its  very  essence,  and 
may  be  said  to  hold  within  it  every  element  distinctive  of 
the  system  as  a philosophy  both  of  being  and  of  history. 
By  a most  fateful  evolution,  the  rock  on  which  the  school  was 
shipwrecked  was  exactly  the  point  which  the  master  most 
avoided  ; at  least,  where  his  speech  became  most  obscure 
and  oracular.  The  point  which  he  laboriously  emphasized, 
the  fact  and  function  of  incarnation,  elicited  little  but  agree- 
ment and  approbation  ; the  point  he  touched  most  delicately, 
the  relation  of  the  idea  and  fact  of  incarnation  to  the  his- 
torical Jesus,  occasioned  the  storms  amid  which  the  school 
may  be  said  to  have  perished.  The  course  of  this  fateful  but 
inevitable  evolution  is  what  we  have  to  trace. 


HIS  PHILOSOPHY  HISTORICAL,  BUT  NOT  CRITICAL.  21 5 

While  the  Hegelian  philosophy  was  pre-eminently  a philo- 
sophy of  history,  taken,  in  the  widest  sense,  as  comprehensive 
of  nature  and  man,  with  all  his  institutions  and  achieve- 
ments, yet  it  was  not  in  the  strict  and  proper  sense  a critical 
philosophy.  Hegel’s  was  not  a critical  mind ; it  was  too 
constructive,  loved  large  and  synthetic  views  too  much  to 
appreciate  easily  the  analytical  and  dissolving  processes  of 
criticism.  He  had  little  sympathy  with  the  Homeric  disserta- 
tions of  Wolf,  or  with  Niebuhr’s  destructive  and  constructive 
feats  in  Roman  history.  His  dialectical  process  could  be 
better  illustrated  by  the  main  factors  and  general  tendencies 
of  history  than  by  minute  yet  often  revolutionary  inquiries 
into  its  details.  His  system,  as  an  absolute  as  distinguished 
from  a subjective  idealism,  easily  tended  to  become  a mere 
theory  of  the  real,  a philosophy  that  justified  what  was  by 
finding  a sufficient  reason  for  it.  This  meant  that  at  root  it 
was  an  optimism,  not  emotional  like  Leibnitz’,  but  intellectual, 
using  the  language  of  thought  rather  than  of  the  imagination 
or  the  heart.  Hence  Hegel  did  not  say,  “This  is  the  best  of 
all  possible  worlds  ” ; but  he  said,  “ What  is  real  is  rational, 
and  what  is  rational  is  real.”  Yet,  unless  carefully  guarded, 
the  latter  implies  a more  unqualified  optimism  than  the 
former,  for  it  does  not  apologize  for  evil  by  pleading  the 
necessity  that  belongs  to  all  created  and  therefore  limited 
and  imperfect  being,  but  it  boldly  justifies  evil  by  turning 
the  actual  into  the  rational.  Of  course,  this  did  not  happen 
in  Hegel’s  own  hands,  but  it  represented  a tendency  in  his 
school.  What  did  happen  in  his  hands,  however,  was  that 
his  system  became  more  constructive  or  interpretative  of 
history  than  critical  of  h storical  facts.  He  was  critical 
enough  of  criticism  and  critics,  but  not  of  the  literature  and 
phenomena  they  handled.  His  function  was  to  explain  these 
by  relating  them  to  his  system,  making  them  parts  of  a 
whole,  not  by  dealing  with  them  specifically  and  looking  at 
his  system  from  the  standpoint  they  supplied.  Applied  to 


2I6 


GOD  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE. 


our  question  this  meant  two  things  : (i)  the  Christianity  he 
construed  was  the  traditional,  as  it  lived  in  the  Scriptures, 
the  creeds,  and  the  institutions  of  the  Church  he  knew  ; and 
(2)  he  looked  at  it  through  his  philosophy  and  as  it  affected 
his  philosophy  ; he  did  not  look  at  his  philosophy  through  it 
and  at  it  as  affected  by  his  philosophy.  It  was  when  men 
of  more  purely  theological  interests  and  training  came  to  do 
this  that  the  revolt  and  revolution  happened. 

But  this  represents  only  a general  attitude  and  tendency, 
not  the  determinative  doctrines  of  the  philosophy.  These 
touched  our  question  at  two  points,  a formal  and  a material  : 
the  one  was  connected  with  the  Hegelian  dialectic,  or  theory 
of  knowing  ; the  other  with  the  metaphysic,  or  theory  of  being. 
Hegel’s  doctrine  as  to  the  process  and  conditions,  or  method 
and  nature,  of  knowledge  determined  his  notion  of  religion. 
He  did  not,  like  Schelling,  storm  and  reach  the  Absolute  by 
intuition  or  immediate  knowledge — this,  Hegel  said,  was  to 
begin  with  an  Absolute  that  was  shot,  as  it  were,  out  of  a 
pistol ; but  he  reached  it  by  a reasoned  process  which 
exhibited  the  progress  of  the  consciousness  from  sensuous 
perception  to  pure  knowledge — a progress  governed  by  thought 
in  the  successive  phases  or  stages  of  its  evolution.  Nor 
did  he,  like  Schleiermacher,  seek  the  roots  of  religion  in 
feeling,  but  in  thought.  The  object  of  religion,  as  of  philo- 
sophy, was  eternal  truth,  God,  and  nothing  but  God,  and 
the  explication  of  God.  They  were  identical  as  to  matter, 
differed  only  as  to  form.  God  existed  to  philosophy  as  a 
notion,  as  an  object  of  pure  thought  in  the  form  of  thought, 
but  to  religion  as  an  idea  or  figurate  conception — 
thought  still  clothed  in  a sensuous  form.  This  Hegelian 
distinction  must  here  be  recognized.  Unless  it  be  under- 
stood subsequent  discussions  and  expositions  will  be  un- 
intelligible. Strauss  selected  this  distinction  as  the  most 
important  point  for  theology  in  the  Hegelian  system.  The 
notion  {Begriff)  is  the  highest  form  of  thought,  the  mind’s 


THE  MATTER  AND  THE  FORM  OF  THOUGHT. 


217 


grasp  or  comprehension  of  an  object  in  its  totality,  as  it 
exists  in  and  for  itself  The  idea  {Vorstelliing)  is  thought 
in  a picture,  a general  conceived  in  an  individual,  the  im- 
perishable in  a transient  vehicle,  the  boundless  and  eternal  in 
the  conditions  of  space  and  time.  The  notion  seizes  the  truth 
as  it  is  in  itself,  above  the  limits  and  forms  of  the  senses  ; but 
in  the  idea  thought  is  still  bound  in  the  fetters  of  the  sensuous, 
floats  in  continual  unrest  between  perception  and  pure  thought 
What  the  notion  contains  in  the  unity  and  totality  of  its 
elements  the  idea  exhibits  only  relatively  and  subjectively, 
on  this  or  that  side,  and  under  given  relations.  The  one  is 
but  a reflexion  in  which  the  pure  light,  which  is  the  element 
of  the  other,  appears  in  the  most  varied  colours.  Now,  the 
Hegelian  distinction  between  these  forms  of  thought  con- 
stitutes the  Hegelian  distinction  between  philosophy  and 
religion.  The  matter  was  in  each  case  the  same ; the  forms 
under  which  it  was  conceived  alone  differed.  Whether  the 
difference  in  form  did  not  involve  an  essential  difference 
in  matter,  is  a question  that  need  not  here  be  discussed. 
Enough  to  know  there  was  for  Hegel,  as  for  Homer,  one 
speech  for  the  gods,  another  for  men.  Religion  was  the 
form  in  which  truth  existed  for  mankind,  a lantern  here 
of  horn,  there  of  glass,  in  which  beams  of  the  eternal  light 
were  carried,  making  humanity,  even  in  its  dark  course, 
conscious  of  the  right  way. 

Now,  this  formal  involved  the  material  question.  Philo- 
sophy and  religion  were  formally  different,  but  materially 
identical : philosophy  was  religion  in  the  form  of  thought, 
with  all  its  truths  reasoned,  articulated,  explicated  ; religion 
was  philosophy  in  the  form  of  the  idea,  with  all  its  truths 
expressed  in  language,  customs,  and  institutions,  more  or  less 
sensuous,  symbolical,  figurative.  Religions  differ  as  to  the 
measure  or  degree  in  which  they  hold  or  embody  the  truth, 
but  the  Christian  stands  distinguished  from  all  others  as 
the  absolute  religion — one  whose  substance  or  contents 


2i8 


THE  ABSOLUTE  RELIGION  ONE 


agree  with  those  of  the  absolute  philosophy,  needing,  in 
order  to  become  it,  only  to  be  translated  into  the  terms 
of  the  notion.  Now,  the  point  where  their  coincidence  and 
material  identity  becomes  most  apparent  is  as  regards  their 
common  basis  or  ultimate  object — the  Absolute  of  philosophy 
is  the  God  of  religion.  The  Christian  religion  was  nothing 
but  the  realization  or  embodied  activity  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  Godhead,  while  the  philosophy  was  nothing 
but  the  dialectical  explication  of  the  Absolute  ; nature  and 
man  were  but  forms  and  results  of  its  self-manifestation.  As 
the  Absolute  and  the  Godhead  differed  in  name  but  agreed 
in  essence,  so  did  the  religion  and  the  philosophy.  Hegel’s 
Absolute  was  not,  like  Schelling’s,  indifference  or  identity — 
that,  he  said,  was  but  the  night  in  which  all  cows  look  black  ; 
but  it  was  a process,  a development,  by  and  out  of  which 
all  difference  was  evolved.  In  the  place  of  Spinoza’s  Infinite 
Substance  he  set  the  Infinite  Subject,  and  instead  of  its  two 
mechanically  opposed  attributes,  extension  and  thought,  and 
its  transient  modes,  he  emphasized  the  eternal  movement  of 
the  Subject,  the  process  by  which  it  died  that  it  might  live, 
as  it  were  sacrificing  its  infinitude  to  finitude,  dissolving  its 
abstract  and  universal  in  order  to  concrete  and  particular 
being,  yet  ever  only  that  it  might  return  out  of  the  finite  and 
the  particular  into  the  infinite  and  universal  again,  though  as 
articulated  and  reconciled  consciousness.  Or,  to  express  it 
otherwise,  the  Absolute  as  thought  must  in  thinking  distin- 
guish Himself  from  Himself,  make  Himself  to  Himself  an  ob- 
ject, must  as  it  were  limit  and  objectify  Himself,  but  only  that 
He  may  in  this  form  return  to  Himself — know  Himself  as 
thus  distinguished  and  objectified  as  identical  with  Himself. 

But  this  highest  truth  in  philosophy  is  only  the  reasoned 
counterpart  of  the  highest  truth  in  religion — the  Godhead  or 
Trinity.^  That  doctrine  was  at  once  the  whole  substance  or 

^ “ Philosophie  der  Religion,”  Werke,  vol.  xii.,  p.  184.  For  Hegel’s  own 
exposition  of  his  doctrine  see  pp.  177-288,  and  “ Phaenomenologie  des 


WITH  THE  ABSOLUTE  PHILOSOPHY. 


219 


essence  of  religion,  and  a complete  philosophy  of  God  and 
the  world.  The  Absolute  as  pure  being  and  pure  thought  is 
the  Father  ; it  belongs  to  His  being,  to  His  very  essence,  to 
be  Creator  ; thought  to  be  thought  must  posit  an  object,  must 
beget  another  ; spirit  as  spirit  must  reveal  itself,  revelation  is 
of  its  essence,  and  the  process  of  positing  another,  of  revealing 
self,  is  eternal.  Without  this  process  thought  would  not  be 
thought  ; apart  from  the  eternal  generation,  God  would  not 
be  God.  What  is  posited,  generated,  sublated,  is  the  Son  : 
God  in  eternally  distinguishing  Himself  from  Himself  eternally 
begets  Himself  as  His  Son.  This  Son  is  the  world  of  finitude 
existing  in  distinction  and  difference  from  the  Infinite,  yet 
remaining  identical  with  it.  But  what  is  thus  differentiated 
ever  struggles  towards  return  and  reconciliation,  and  this 
achieved  the  difference  is  overcome,  which  means  that  Spirit 
knows  itself  one  with  the  Eternal,  and  this  Spirit  is  the 
Holy  Ghost.  In  the  Godhead  the  whole  history  of  the 
universe  is  thus  subsumed  ; the  Father  is  God  as  He  exists 
in  and  for  Himself,  in  eternity  ; the  Son  is  God  as  He  exists 
in  the  form  of  another,  in  time,  separated  in  order  that  He 
may  be  reconciled  ; the  Spirit  is  the  other  returned  into 
oneness,  the  particular  reconciled  with  the  universal.  The 
process  by  which  the  Absolute  is  evolved  into  the  relative 
and  the  relative  returns,  reconciled,  into  the  bosom  of  the 
Absolute,  represents  at  once  the  life  of  God  and  the  history 
of  the  universe.  The  former  is  the  latter  known  and  read 
from  within ; the  latter  is  the  former  unfolded,  explicated, 
understood  from  without.  By  the  doctrine  of  the  Godhead 
God  and  the  world  are  so  combined  that  without  the  world 

Geistes,”  Werke,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  561  ff.  Professor  Seth  (“  Hegelianism  and 
Personality,”  p.  165)  seems  to  go  too  far  when  he  says : “ Hegel’s  specula- 
tive Trinity  is,  in  fact,  simply  the  rehabilitation  of  that  ancient  philosopheme 
which,  at  the  end  of  the  period  of  enlightenment,  Lessing  had  laid  his 
vivifying  hand  upon,  and  made  a present  of  to  the  new  German  philosophy.” 
This  is  to  overlook  the  genetic  development  of  the  philosophy  and  certain 
radical  distinctions  in  the  two  doctrines. 


220  INCARNATION  MORE  RACIAL  THAN  INDIVIDUAL. 

there  could  be  no  God,  and  in  all  the  world  God  is  and  acts  ; 
its  history  is  but  the  process  by  which  He  distinguishes 
Himself  from  Himself  and  reconciles  Himself  to  Himself. 

But  now  this  highly  speculative  construction,  which  has  in 
it  elements  of  the  profoundest  truth  and  insight,  had  to  be 
applied.  The  most  specific  point  of  application  was  also  the 
most  dangerous  : the  Godhead  was  so  construed  as  to  involve 
incarnation,  but  the  incarnation  it  involved  was  universal, 
while  the  Christian  was  particular,  concerned  a specific  his- 
torical Person.  Nothing  indeed  could  be  more  explicit  than 
Hegel’s  teaching  as  to  the  necessity  and  actuality  of  incarna- 
tion ; it  was  of  the  very  essence  or  content  alike  of  his 
philosophy  and  of  the  absolute  religion.  By  it  the  unity  of 
the  Divine  and  human  natures  was  revealed  ; each  faced  the 
other,  not  as  opposites,  but  as  cognates,  related  as  universal 
and  particular,  not  as  isolated  and  mechanically  separated 
atoms.  Man  was  the  son,  the  other  or  object  existing  in 
separateness  and  distinction  from  the  Subject.  But  now 
in  order  to  bring  this  idea  of  a racial  or  universal  incarnation 
into  relation  with  the  Christian,  and  specifically  with  the 
person  of  Christ,  Hegel  called  another  idea  into  court — atone- 
ment or  reconciliation.  Man  is  divided  from  God,  and  needs 
to  be  lifted  from  his  state  of  division  to  one  of  union.  His 
empirical  being  is  one  of  contradiction  with  his  ideal,  and 
what  he  needs  is  to  lose  the  empirical  and  realize  the  ideal,  or 
become  consciously  one  with  God.  This  essential  unity  must 
be  presented  to  the  consciousness  or  interpreted  to  the  expe- 
rience of  man  by  a manifest  fact  or  sensuous  reality  in  order 
that  he  may  through  knowledge  attain  to  union.  In  other 
words,  in  order  to  save  man  from  his  state  of  division  and 
estrangement,  God  must  “ in  an  objective  manner  ” enter  this 
empirical  or  sensuous  present  as  man’s  equal  or  fellow,  and  so 
cause  it  to  appear — and  appearance  is  always  for  another,  and 
the  other  is  here  the  Church  or  the  society  of  faith — that  the 
Divine  and  the  human  natures  are  not  in  themselves  different, 


RECONCILIATION  OF  GOD  AND  MAN. 


221 


but  really  alike,  akin,  able  to  be  in  the  unity  of  a person.'  So 
far  good  ; but  Hegel  does  not  proceed  to  prove  that  a given 
Individual  knew  Himself,  while  man,  essentially  one  with  God  ; 
on  the  contrary,  what  he  explains  is  : how  the  faith  in  the 
God-manhood  has  arisen— 2>.,  what  he  emphasizes  is  the 
origin  and  reality  of  the  faith  in  the  Incarnation,  what  he  does 
not  emphasize  is  that  a given  historical  Person  was  the  con- 
scious, incarnate  God.  He  argues  that  the  Incarnation  has 
been  and  is  because  (i)  it  is  the  faith  of  the  world  ; (2)  the 
Spirit  as  a self-consciousness,  i.e.  as  a real  man,  is  there,  a 
manifest  existence;  (3)  He  exists  to  immediate  certitude  ; and 
(4)  the  believing  consciousness  sees  and  feels  and  hears  His 
Deity.  The  remarkable  thing  is  the  relation  of  the  faith  to 
the  Person  rather  than  the  Person  to  the  faith.  Christ  through 
death  became  the  God-man  in  the  faith  of  the  Church,  and  His 
history  was  written  by  those  who  held  this  faith  and  upon 
whom  the  Spirit  had  been  poured  out.  The  main  thing  was 
the  consciousness  not  of  the  historical  Christ,  but  of  those 
who  held  Him  to  be  the  God-man. 

The  speculative  construction  was  easy  ; its  conciliation  with 
historical  fact  was  difficult.  Hegel  evaded  the  difficulty  by 
dealing  with  the  faith  as  authenticating  the  fact  rather  than 
with  the  fact  as  creating  and  justifying  the  faith.  The 
evasion,  with  all  that  it  involved,  was  not  immediately  seen  ; 
theologians  were  more  disposed  to  be  appreciative  than  to 
be  critical.  The  new  system  widened,  enriched,  magnified, 
fertilized,  the  old  theology ; every  dogma  seemed  as  if  possessed 
of  a new  spirit,  as  if  it  were  illumined  and  transfigured  by 
having  become  the  abode  of  Deity.  The  doctrine  of  incarna- 
tion as  now  construed  brought  God  out  of  His  abstract  and 
inaccessible  solitude  and  made  Him  the  most  concrete  and 
living  of  beings  ; emphasized  His  nature  as  spirit,  love, 
activity ; dissolved  His  being  as  a mere  external  Deity, 
whose  home  was  the  other  side  of  nature  and  man  and 

^ Werke,  vol.  xii.,  pp.  238-251  ; vol.  ii.,  pp.  586-593. 


222 


PHILOSOPHY  TRANSFIGURES  DOGMATIC 


history,  and  made  Him  present  always  and  everywhere,  in  > 
every  moment  of  time  and  in  every  soul  of  man  ; lifted  man 
at  once  out  of  the  proud  yet  empty  self-sufficiency  in  which 
the  older  philosophers  had  placed  him,  and  out  of  the  dust 
into  which  the  older  theologies  had  cast  him,  and  made  him  a 
veritable  son  of  God,  like  in  nature  to  the  God  whose  son  he 
was,  created  for  Him  as  created  by  Him,  with  all  nature  and 
all  history  so  organized  and  directed  as  to  impel  him  towards 
the  God  who  was  his  end  and  home.  It  was  small  marvel 
that  the  theologians  were  grateful  for  ideas  that  so  vivified 
theology.  They  were  delighted  to  discover  that  doctrines 
translated  into  the  language  of  the  notion  became  high  philo- 
sophical truths.  Men  like  Marheineke  discovered  that  ortho- 
dox formulae  as  to  the  homoousion  and  the  age7mesia  were 
as  golden  vessels  of  eternal  truths  ministered  by  consecrated 
hands  ; they  described  Sabellianism  as  a relapse  into  Judaism, 
Arianism  as  a return  to  heathenism,  and  the  doctrine  of  Atha- 
nasius as  the  first  speculative  development  of  Christian  truth. 
His  theology  was  but  absolute  idealism  in  an  empirical  form  ; 
it  had  only  to  be  translated  into  the  notional  form  to  be 
a system  of  reasoned  truth.  Systems  of  Dogmatic  adopted 
the  new  terminology,  and  distributed  their  matter  in  three 
divisions  : the  kingdom  of  the  Father,  or  God,  existing  in 
Himself ; the  kingdom  of  the  Son,  or  God  objectified,  creating, 
revealing  Himself,  incarnating  Himself,  and  so  redeeming 
man  ; and  the  kingdom  of  the  Spirit,  or  God  in  renev/ed 
man  or  the  Church  as  returned  into  Himself.  God  became 
the  essence  of  man,  man  the  actuality  of  God.  Theology  was 
happy  at  the  supreme  good  fortune  that  had  come  to  her, 
her  ability  to  speak  in  her  own  tongue  the  very  identical 
thoughts  of  her  old  enemy.  A beautiful  and  hopeful  day 
of  peace  had  dawned  on  the  field  of  ancient  strife.  “ The  old 
prophecy  of  the  patriarchs  of  modern  philosophy  appeared  on 
the  point  of  fulfilment,  not  only  as  regards  religion  in  general, 
but  Christianity  in  particular.  A limit  seemed  set  to  the 


AND  SUBMITS  TO  BAPTISM. 


223 


long  feud  between  philosophy  and  religion  by  the  alliance 
of  the  two  houses,  and  the  Hegelian  system  was  saluted  as 
the  child  of  peace  and  of  the  promise,  with  whom  a new  order 
of  things  was  to  begin,  when  the  wolf  should  dwell  with  the 
lamb,  and  the  leopard  lie  down  with  the  kid.  Wisdom,  the 
proud  heatheness,  humbly  submitted  to  baptism,  and  made 
a Christian  confession  of  faith ; while  faith,  on  her  side,  did 
not  hesitate  to  certify  that  Wdsdom  had  become  wholly 
Christian.”  ^ 

§ VI. — Historical  Criticism  and  Theology: 

SCHLEIERMACHER. 

But  the  critical  defects  of  the  Hegelian  theology  could  not 
escape  notice  and  accentuation.  Its  aversion  to  criticism  on  the 
one  hand,  and  on  the  other  its  reluctance  to  bring  its  conception 
of  the  Incarnation  into  direct  relation  with  the  history  and  his- 
torical person  of  Jesus,  were,  though  not  purposely  or  explicitly, 
forced  into  prominence  by  one  as  eminent  in  theology  as  Hegel 
was  in  philosophy.  Schleiermacher  had  suffered  from  Hegel’s 
not  very  merciful  or  just  criticism,  but  no  other  man  had  so 
quickened  and  modified  religious  thought  in  Germany  in  all  its 
phases — speculative,  critical,  ethical,  ecclesiastical.  He  made 
and  ruled  for  many  years  from  his  professor’s  chair  the  theo- 
logical mind  of  the  country,  attracted  and  instructed  by  his 
pulpit  the  educated  classes  of  Berlin,  and  exercised  through 
the  press  a commanding  influence  on  many  sections  of  thought. 
He  happily  escaped  the  two  influences  dominant  in  his  early 
years — French  Illuminism  in  the  State,  shallow  Rationalism 
in  the  Church.  He  was  born  of  Calvinistic  parents,  educated 
among  the  Moravians,  and  so  knew  religion  on  both  its  evan- 
gelical and  emotional  or  pietistic  sides.  It  developed,  softened, 
inspired  his  always  susceptible  nature,  but  it  did  not  save  him 

* Strauss,  “ Glaubenslehre,”  vol.  i.,  pp.  I,  2. 


224  SCHLEIERMACIIER:  THE  ESSENCE  OF  RELIGION 

from  doubt,  rather  stimulated  the  critical  side  of  his  intellect. 
But  it  helped  him  by  enlisting  his  heart  on  the  side  of  religion 
to  fight  his  scepticism,  and  made  him  peculiarly  susceptible 
to  the  just  budding  enthusiasm  of  the  Romanticists.  He 
seemed  for  a while  to  become  the  theological  spokesman  of 
the  school,  the  apologist  of  intense  and  emotional  religion 
against  arid  Deism,  especially  as  the  Schlegels,  Novalis,  and 
Tieck  helped  to  feed  the  fire  and  fancy  that  were  in  him  ; but 
he  was  too  many-sided  to  be  a scholar  in  any  one  school. 
He  was  a philosopher,  a learner  from  Jacobi,  Fichte,  and 
Schelling,  and  an  enthusiastic  student  of  Plato.  He  was  a 
critic,  open  in  mind  to  the  new  methods  that  were  breathing 
the  breath  of  life  into  classical  studies  and  rediscovering  the 
ancient  world.  And  his  hand  was  in  each  department  the 
hand  of  a master.  Speculative,  theological,  critical,  philo- 
logical, ethical  treatises  came  from  his  fluent  pen,  each  original, 
suggestive,  penetrative  in  matter,  and  fascinating  in  form. 
And  besides  his  own  proper  work  he  taught,  as  Strauss  has 
happily  said,  “ Plato  to  speak  in  German,  or  his  German 
readers  to  think  in  Greek.”  ^ 

Schleiermacher  helped  to  create  the  new  epoch  in  theology. 
In  the  conflict  between  Rationalism  and  Supernaturalism  he 
lifted  the  old  ground  from  beneath  their  feet,  and  raised  issues 
at  once  deeper  and  higher.  He  took  his  stand  on  religion,  and 
saved  it  from  friends  and  enemies  alike.  He  resolved  it  into 
a thing  essentially  human,  necessary  to  man.  Religion  was 
not  a thought  or  volition,  the  creation  of  the  reason  or  the 
conscience,  metaphysics  or  ethics,  conduct  or  cultus,  but  a 
feeling — the  feeling,  direct,  intuitive,  of  absolute  dependence. 
It  was  the  immediate  consciousness  of  the  being  of  everything 
finite  in  the  Infinite  and  through  the  Infinite,  of  everything 
temporal  in  the  Eternal  and  through  the  Eternal  ; it  was  to 
feel  amid  all  becoming  and  change,  amid  all  action  and 


' Strauss,  “ Characteristiken  und  Kritiken,”  p.  6. 


AND  THE  HISTORICAL  RELIGIONS.  22$ 

suffering,  our  very  life  as  life  only  as  it  was  in  and  through 
God.^  With  the  nature  of  God  it  had  no  concern  ; specula- 
tion concerning  Him  might  be  philosophy  or  theology,  but 
was  not  religion.  But  the  feeling,  as  it  was  of  dependence, 
could  not  live  in  isolation  ; the  universe  was  in  ceaseless 
activity,  revealing  itself  to  us  and  in  us  every  moment ; and 
to  be  moved  by  what  we  thus  experienced  and  felt,  not  as 
separate  units,  but  as  parts  of  a whole,  conditioned  and 
supplemented  by  all  the  rest,  was  religion.^  Feeling  then, 
while  the  most  individual  and  arbitrary  of  things,  was  yet, 
because  man  was  at  once  a natural  and  social  being,  so 
interpreted,  as  to  involve  both  a personal  and  collective  con- 
sciousness, a feeling  of  dependence  on  an  Infinite  manifested 
at  once  through  nature,  man,  and  society.^  But  while  this 
was  the  generic  notion  of  religion,  specific  religions  owed  their 
being  to  some  creative  idea  embodied  in  some  creative  person, 
a fundamental  faith  realized  in  a fundamental  fact  ; their 
founders  were  persons  who  so  realized  a new  and  characteristic 
consciousness  of  God  as  to  create  societies  in  order  to  its 
propagation.  Such  religions  were  either  sensuous  or  teleo- 
logical : the  sensuous,  which  had  types  in  Hellenism  and 
Islam,  were  religions  which  subordinated  the  moral  and  active 
emotions  to  the  natural ; but  the  teleological,  which  included 
Judaism  and  Christianity,  subordinated  the  natural  emotions 
to  the  moral  and  active.  Of  the  specifically  Christian  con- 
sciousness Christ  was  the  Creator  ; it  owed  its  being  to  Him  ; 
and  as  He  was  necessary  to  its  origin.  He  was  no  less  neces- 
sary to  its  continuance.^  His  was  an  absolutely  perfect  con- 
sciousness, expressive  of  an  absolutely  perfect  relation  to  God, 
which  meant  an  absolutely  full  abode  of  God  in  Him  ; and 
so  the  more  this  consciousness,  which  lived  in  the  society 

' “ Ueber  die  Religion,”  Werke  : zur  Theol.,  vol.  i.,  pp.  184,  185. 

* Ibid.f  p.  193. 

* Ibid.^  p.  207.  But  in  particular  Rede  V. 

* " Glaubenslehre,”  §§  7-1 1. 


15 


226 


THE  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  CHRIST 


and  was  propagated  by  it,  became  man’s,  the  more  perfect 
would  both  the  man  and  his  religion  be. 

Now,  it  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  we  must  understand 
Schleiermacher’s  construction  both  of  the  person  and  the 
history  of  Christ.  He  did  not,  like  Hegel,  come  to  the 
question  from  a speculative  system  in  order  to  incorporate 
the  religion  with  his  philosophy  and  translate  it  into  its  terms  ; 
but  he  came  to  it  from  the  existence  and  the  experience  of 
the  religious  person  and  society,  in  order  the  better  to  inter- 
pret the  source  or  cause  of  their  religious  being.  They  seem 
to  have  this  point  in  common : Hegel  approached  Christ 
through  the  faith  of  the  Church  and  Schleiermacher  through 
what  he  termed  the  Christian  consciousness.  But  this 
apparent  agreement  veiled  a deep  difference  : faith  was  to 
Hegel  something  intellectual,  objective,  and  formulated  ; while 
consciousness  was  to  Schleiermacher  at  once  moral  and 
emotional,  subjective,  experienced,  as  it  were  the  concrete 
soul  of  the  man  and  the  society,  and  its  history.  Then  once 
Hegel  had  the  faith  he  had  no  need  for  the  Person — indeed.  He 
was  to  him  only  a growing  burden  which  could  be  best  got 
rid  of  by  being  forgotten  ; but  Schleiermacher’s  need  for  the 
Person  grew  with  his  interpretation  of  the  consciousness — 
without  Him  it  could  not  be,  nor  any  of  its  phenomena  be 
explained  or  maintained.  His  method  may  be  described  as 
one  of  correlation  and  comparison  ; the  consciousness  was 
an  effect,  the  Person  the  cause,  and  so  he  analyzed  the 
elements  and  motives  of  the  consciousness  that  he  might 
discover  the  forces  by  which  they  were  caused.  The  primary 
elements  were  two — sin  and  redemption,  or  guilt  and  grace  : 
sin  belonged  to  the  consciousness  of  our  collective  natural 
being,  redemption  or  grace  to  the  consciousness  of  our 
renewed  life.  The  creator  of  this  latter  was  Christ ; through 
the  community  with  God  which  He  established  the  faith 
in  His  Godhead  lived.^  In  Him  activity  and  dignity  are 

^ “ Glaubenslehre,”  §§  91-105. 


AND  THE  CHRISTIAN  CONSCIOUSNESS. 


227 


inseparable ; it  were  vain  to  attribute  to  the  Redeemer  a 
higher  dignity  than  the  activity  ascribed  to  Him  warrants 
or  demands,  but  all  it  does  warrant  must  be  ascribed.  Well, 
then,  in  the  collective  life  of  the  society  redemption  is  worked 
by  the  sinless  perfection  of  Jesus  ; this  perfection  He  had  and 
has  communicated.  His  consciousness  having  become,  as  it 
were,  communicable,  transmissible,  heritable.  His  character^ 
therefore,  is  archetypal,  the  original  of  a type  He  not  only 
created,  but  perpetuates.  Tf  neither  the  Church  as  a whole 
nor  any  single  member  realizes  His  sinlessness,  still  the  very 
abiding  of  the  consciousness  of  the  historical  Archetype, 
with  the  ever-renewed  impulses  to  good  and  renewal  it 
creates,  is  witness  to  its  being  and  its  power.  The  arche- 
typal Person  has  thus  become  an  ever-operating  moral  cause  ; 
His  transcendental  yet  historical  being,  which  created  His 
society,  has  become  an  immanent  yet  ever-active,  impulsive, 
and  propulsive  being  maintaining  His  society.  Whence  came 
His  sinlessness  ? It  could  not  possibly  come  out  of  sinful  man- 
kind, could  not  therefore  have  a natural  source, — must,  then, 
have  had  a supernatural,  been  due  to  a creative  act  of  God. 
And  as  His  sinlessness  was  not  simply  a thing  of  His  special 
nature,  but  a permanent  possession,  expressed  in  His  whole 
character  and  all  His  conduct,  then  the  creative  power  must 
have  continued  ; His  consciousness  was  ever  full  of  God, 
God  possessed  Him  without  measure,  in  Him  God  had  literal 
being.  But  did  this  not  take  from  Him  all  identity  with 
man  ? Nay,  it  made  Him  the  normal  man  ; for  sin  is  against 
the  essence  of  man,  and  he  was  made  to  be  a home  of  God. 
The  personality  of  Jesus,  then,  means  that  the  innermost 
force,  whence  all  His  activity  proceeded,  was  the  being  of  God 
in  Him,  a Divine  indwelling  so  real  that  His  humanity  formed 
only  an  organism  for  its  operation  and  realization.  His 
consciousness  of  God  was  therefore  absolute  and  perfect, 
making  Him  the  completion  of  the  old  and  the  beginning 
of  the  new  creation — a real  man,  yet  so  penetrated  and 


228 


THEOLOGY  IS  CHRISTOLOGY. 


possessed  of  Deity  that  He  became,  as  it  were,  in  His  own 
right  a creator  of  a race  or  society  which  He  was  to  fill  as 
full  of  Himself  as  He  was  of  God,  in  order  to  the  realization 
of  God’s  kingdom  on  the  earth. 

Schleiermacher’s  theology  was  thus  essentially  a Christo- 
logy,  a theory  as  to  the  necessity  of  the  historical  person  of 
Jesus  to  the  being  of  the  Christian  religion.  It  was  God, 
man,  and  history  interpreted  through  Him.  But  its  distinctive 
feature  was  its  starting-point  and  standard  of  interpretation, 
the  Christian  consciousness.  This  was,  indeed,  not  an  indi- 
vidual or  arbitrary  consciousness,  but  one  collective  and 
normal,  the  note  of  the  new  humanity  as  distinguished  from 
the  old,  with  its  naturalism  and  sinfulness.  But  this  starting- 
and  standing-point  involved  important  consequences.  Christ 
was  approached  through  the  Church,  yet  not  the  Church  of 
tradition  or  formulated  dogmas  or  of  fixed  institutions,  but 
of  living  experience,  of  loving  and  exercised  reason,  of  free 
inquiry  and  reverent  thought.  Then  the  qualities  most 
essential  to  Him  were  those  most  necessary  to  the  being  of 
the  consciousness  of  a society  redeemed  by  His  sinlessness 
from  its  sin.  As  a consequence  the  emphasis  did  not  fall  on 
the  attributes  and  acts  which  the  old  apologetic  and  the  older 
dogmatic  had  made  so  essential  to  His  person  and  so  demon- 
strative of  His  divinity — the  miracles,  the  supernatural  con- 
ception, the  Resurrection,  the  Ascension  ; but  it  fell  upon  what 
was  ethical,  spiritual,  religious  in  Him — His  sinlessness,  His 
archetypal  character.  His  absolute  consciousness  of  God. 
These  gave  to  Him  His  pre-eminence.  His  peculiar  signifi- 
cance. His  historical  being  bound  Him  to  time.  His  arche- 
typal nature  and  character  to  eternity.  Through  the  former 
only  could  His  society — His  religion — be  explained  ; 
through  the  latter  only  could  His  nature,  reason,  end,  be 
determined.  It  was  characteristic  that,  while  the  speech  of 
the  Hegelian  School  was  all  of  the  God-man,  Schleiermacher’s 
was  all  of  the  Redeemer.  In  his  religious  system  Jesus  held 


THE  SINLESS  REDEEMER. 


229 


the  same  place  as  God  held  in  the  practical  system  of  Kant  : 
in  the  one  case  God  was  a necessity  to  the  conscience,  in  the 
other  Jesus  was  a necessity  to  the  consciousness  ; but  while 
the  former  had  all  the  severity  of  an  inflexible  moral  law,  the 
latter  had  all  the  beauty  and  all  the  grace  of  the  Redeemer 
and  Saviour  of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  II. 


PHILOSOPHICAL  CRITICISM  AND  THE  HISTORY  OF  JESUS. 


O far,  then,  all  the  Christologies  passed  in  review  have 


had  one  quality  in  common : they  were  speculative 
and,  in  a sense,  a priori.  They  reasoned  upwards,  either  from 
an  abstract  philosophy  or  a concrete  society,  to  a doctrine  of 
the  creative  personality  or  fundamental  fact  ; they  did  not 
begin  with  the  history,  construe  the  Person  through  it,  and 
then  work  their  way  downwards  to  the  philosophy  or  the 
society.  Schleiermacher’s  method,  though  it  seemed  his- 
torical, was  really  the  most  subjective  of  all  ; he  carried  from 
the  idealized  consciousness  an  ideal  Christ  back  into  the 
Gospels,  and  then  by  its  help  performed  a critical  process 
which  preserved  all  that  was  necessary  to  his  ideal  and  sur- 
rendered all  that  seemed  superfluous.  While  the  speculative 
Christology  had  been  so  active,  historical  and  literary 
criticism  had  been  almost,  though  not  altogether,  idle.  In 
the  literary  field  various  notable  theories  had  indeed  been 
propounded.  Eichhorn  had  shown  a more  excellent  way 
than  was  known  to  the  old  harmonistic  by  his  hypothesis 
of  an  Urevangelium^  or  primal  Gospel,  which,  already  existing 
in  various  recensions,  had  been  worked  up  by  our  Synoptists. 
Griesbach  had  attempted  to  explain  Mark  as  a series  of 
excerpts  from  Matthew  and  Luke,  while  Hug  accepted  the 
canonical  as  the  chronological  order,  and  conceived  the  later 
as  making  use  of  the  earlier  Evangelists.  Gieseler  had  found 
the  common  source  in  oral  tradition,  and  Schleiermacher  him- 


CRITICISM  AND  THE  GOSPELS. 


231 


self  had  turned  the  oral  into  written  sources,  which  the  three 
Synoptists  had  in  different  orders  connected  and  arranged. 
The  criticism  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  had  been  begun  by  Vogel, 
and  Bretschneider’s  “ Probabilia  ” had  definitely  raised  the 
question  of  its  authenticity.  But  the  speculative  Christology 
made  its  appeal  to  John,  and  would  not  argue  the  question 
of  his  authorship.  His  Christ  was  its  Christ : Herder,  Fichte, 
SchelHng,  Hegel,  Schleiermacher,  all  agreed  with  Luther  that 
the  fourth  was  the  golden  Gospel,  the  very  temple  and  pillar 
of  the  truth.  And  speculation  was  as  independent  of 
history  as  of  criticism.  While  Schleiermacher  had  in  1821 
in  Berlin  begun  to  lecture  on  the  Life  of  Jesus,  and  Hase 
in  1823  in  Tubingen  and  in  1828  in  Leipzig  had  done  the 
same,  yet  the  only  published  works  were  Hase’s  “ Handbuch  ” 
and  Paulus’  “ Leben  Jesu.”  As  to  the  latter,  its  hard 
Rationalism — often  more  grotesque  in  its  prosaic  matter- 
of-factness  than  Romanticism  in  its  most  whimsical  fantasies 
• — has  insight  and  enlightenment  for  no  human  soul.  One 
of  the  driest  of  books,  it  has  yet  come  to  be  one  of  the 
most  amusing,  illustrating  the  miraculous  vagaries  of  an 
exegesis  that  must  discover  authentic  facts,  but  can  allow 
nothing  supernatural  in  the  evangelical  narratives.  It  is 
written  with  the  double  purpose  of  proving  that  in  the 
Gospels  all  the  history  is  real,  but  all  the  miracles  false, 
which  means  that  for  every  miracle  there  is  a natural  ex- 
planation, though  the  explanation  is  often  more  remarkable 
than  the  miracle.  The  marvel  is  that  any  one  should  have 
thought  the  history  under  such  conditions  worth  saving 
or  Jesus  a person  deserving  either  of  belief  or  reverence. 
Well  said  Schleiermacher,  years  indeed  before  Paulus  pub- 
lished his  “Leben”:  “How  a Jewish  Rabbi  of  philanthropic 
mind  and  somewhat  Socratic  morals,  with  a few  miracles,  or 
at  least  what  others  took  for  such,  and  the  ability  to  utter 
some  clever  gnomes  and  parables — how  One  who  was  this  and 
nothing  more,  and  who,  were  He  only  this,  were  not  fit  to 


232  SPECULATIVE  CONSTRUCTION  OF  THE  HISTORICAL 

Stand  before  Moses  or  Mohammed,  could  have  caused  such  an 
effect  as  a new  religion  and  Church, — to  be  able  to  conceive  how 
this  were  possible  one  must  first  take  leave  of  his  senses  ! ” 

§ I. — Strauss  and  His  Masters. 

Let  us  see,  then,  how  matters  stood  : there  were  several  large 
and  bold  Christologies,  but  no  corresponding  criticism  of  the 
Gospels  or  study  of  their  history.  There  were  highly  abstruse 
yet  comprehensive  doctrines  of  the  Incarnation,  but  no  funda- 
mental inquiry  into  the  mind  or  life  of  the  historical  Person 
who  was  said  to  have  revealed  or  realized  it.  The  Redeemer 
was  elaborately  constructed  out  of  the  Christian  consciousness, 
and  the  picture  of  Him  in  the  sources  adapted  to  this  ideal 
rather  than  the  ideal  made  and  fashioned  according  to  the 
sources.  In  one  respect  this  state  of  matters  was  not  excep- 
tional ; on  the  contrary,  it  might  be  described  as  normal.  In 
England  the  old  dogmatic  was  quite  as  remote  from  historical 
study  of  the  historical  Person,  and  the  new  Anglo-Catholics 
were  still  more  remote  ; indeed,  as  regards  the  latter,  there  is 
nothing  so  startling  in  their  early  literature  as  the  absence  of 
all,  not  to  say  scientific,  but  even  intelligent,  study  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, and  especially  of  the  creative  Personality  of  the  faith. 
Measured  by  such  standards  the  German  mind  was  at  this 
period  fruitfully  active  in  this  field.  But  what  made  the  state 
of  things  extraordinary  and  unstable  was  the  audacity  of  so 
much  speculative  construction  without  any  correlative  research 
or  inquiry  into  the  history  of  the  Person  construed.  The 
inquiry  was  bound  to  come,  and  was  no  less  bound  when  it 
did  come  to  be  of  a revolutionary  character.  The  man  who 
opened  it  was  David  Friedrich  Strauss.  He  had  come  to 
Berlin  to  study  philosophy  and  theology  under  the  two  great 
masters,  who  from  difference  of  nature,  as  well  as  of  doctrine 
and  method,  cordially  inter-despised  each  other.  They,  with 
scholars  almost  their  equals,  lectured  in  the  University  : Hegel 
^ “ Reden  iib.  Rel.,”  v.,  note  14. 


PERSON  WITHOUT  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM. 


233 


now  massive,  majestic,  like  a swollen  river  running  between 
bank  and  bank  and  bearing  down  whatever  stood  in  its 
course,  and  now  strung,  tense,  like  a charged  catapult  shooting 
out  a criticism  in  a metaphor  or  an  argument  in  a sentence 
that  went  straight  and  strong  through  any  defensive  armour  ; 
Schleiermacher  nimble,  subtle,  graceful,  like  the  streamlet 
that  leaps  as  it  runs,  making  beauty  for  the  eye  and  music  for 
the  ear.  The  schools  divided  the  city,  emulation  quickened 
thought.  Collision  sharpened  their  antitheses,  contact  deep- 
ened their  contrasts.  Marheineke  applied  absolute  Idealism 
to  theology,  interpreted  religious  doctrines  into  their  notional 
form,  made  the  person  of  Jesus  the  point  where  the  unity  of 
God  and  man,  the  Divine  essence  in  its  human  realization, 
became  visible,  and  so  manipulated  idea  and  notion  that 
the  Augsburg  Confession  and  the  new  philosophy,  Luther’s 
catechism  and  Hegel’s  logic  were  different  only  as  to  form, 
but  were  as  to  matter  the  same.  Neander,  the  last  of  the 
Fathers,  as  his  disciples  loved  to  call  him,  childlike,  erudite, 
wise  by  his  very  unworldliness,  a Protestant  monk  or  saint,i 
but  no  ascetic,  embodied  in  himself  and  applied  to  Church 
history  what,  in  a sense,  might  be  termed  the  fundamental 
principle  of  Schleiermacher — Pectus  est,  quod  theologum  facit. 

Men  from  all  parts  of  the  country — parsons  from  their 
quiet  vicarages,  students,  tutors,  doctors  from  the  Universities 
— came  to  Berlin,  ardent,  admiring,  to  drink  at  the  fountain- 
head from  the  undefiled  wells  of  pure  thought  and  the  religious 
consciousness.  Of  these  no  man  was  thirstier,  from  toilsome 
wandering  along  the  rugged  way  that  led  from  Kant  to  Hegel, 
than  Strauss.  But  to  his  dismay  the  cholera  soon  after  his 
arrival  carried  off  Hegel,  and  he  had  to  fight  his  perplexities 
without  the  master’s  aid.  What  began  his  trouble  was  the 
distinction  between  the  idea  and  the  notion,  as  equal  to  the 
distinction  between  religion  and  philosophy,  which  had  been 
said  to  involve  formal,  but  not  material,  difference.  But  this, 

^ Schwartz,  “ Geschichte  der  Neuesten  TheoL,”  p.  42. 


234 


THE  NOTION  AND  HISTORY. 


in  the  mind  of  one  who  had  been  trained  to  study  and  to 
teach  the  Scriptures  as  well  as  philosophy,  inevitably  raised 
the  question  : — In  what  relation  do  the  historical  contents  of 
the  Bible,  especially  of  the  Gospels,  stand  to  the  notion? 
Do  they  belong  to  the  matter  which  is  the  same  for  both 
idea  and  notion,  or  only  to  what  as  form  is  dissolved  by 
the  disembodying  action  of  thought?  Is  the  pre-eminent 
evangelical  fact  or  Person  only  a concentration  for  the 
religious  consciousness  of  the  idea  in  its  process  of  realiza- 
tion, or  has  it  unique  and  absolute  value  for  speculative 
thought?  The  Hegelians  argued  from  the  unity  of  the 
Divine  and  human  natures  to  the  reality  of  the  incarnation  in 
Christ.  In  Him  the  idea  of  the  God-man  had  been  actualized. 
But  what  warrant  was  there  for  this  individualization  ? The 
philosophy  that  resolved  the  Absolute  into  a process  could 
not  concede  to  a single  person  universal  and  permanent  and 
exclusive  being.  The  maxim,  too,  “ Whatever  is  actual  is 
rational,”  applied  to  theology,  justified  all  its  doctrines,  made 
the  formulated  and  the  persistent  the  valid,  and  so  left  thought 
no  freer  than  before.  But  had  not  criticism  questioned  the 
credibility  of  the  evangelical  facts,  the  veracity  of  the  sources, 
the  accuracy  of  the  narratives  ? Berlin  was  ringing  with  the 
fame  of  certain  lectures  on  the  life  of  Jesus  which  Schleiermacher 
had  been  delivering.  He  had  shown  how  the  person  of  Christ 
could  be  constructed  from  the  Christian  consciousness,  had 
subtly  analysed  documents,  transposed  narratives,  involved 
the  once  certain  in  uncertainty.  Strauss  had  heard  the  master 
lecture,  had  notes  of  the  lectures  taken  in  two  different  years, 
though  these  could  be  as  little  transcribed  as  a dancer  in 
full  swing  could  be  photographed.^  But  this  critical  method 
applied  to  the  Gospels  with  a freedom  that  only  a very  mature 
and  independent  Christian  consciousness  could  justify,  sug- 
gested the  question  ; — Can  I not  by  its  help  work  the  “ Life  of 
Jesus  ” into  harmony  with  the  new  philosophy  ? He  thought 
^ “ Der  Christus  des  Glaubens,”  p.  8. 


235 


THE  “LEBEN  JESU.” 

he  could,  and  here  is  the  original  design:  “(i)  Positive  or 
traditional — an  objective  exhibition  of  the  life  of  Jesus  accord- 
ing to  the  Gospels,  an  exposition  as  to  how  He  lives  in 
believers,  and  the  reconciliation  of  both  sides  in  the  second 
article  of  the  Apostles’  Creed.  (2)  Negative  or  critical — the 
history  of  Jesus  dissolved  for  the  most  part  as  history.  (3) 
Dogmatic  restoration  of  what  had  been  destroyed.”^  The 
critical  part  was  only  the  preliminary  condition  of  the  con- 
structive ; the  facts  were  to  be  abolished  to  leave  thought  free 
scope.  The  man  was  only  twenty-four,  but  he  had  mapped 
out  his  v/ork.  His  soundings  were  hardly  well  begun  when  he 
resolved  to  draw  up  a chart  contradicting  and  invalidating 
those  that  had  been  made  before.  Three  years  later  the 
scheme  was  realized  on  a much  larger  scale  than  the  original 
design  and  with  momentous  issues  in  the  “ Leben  Jesu.” 

§ H. — The  “Leben  Jesu.” 

This  book  has  now  to  be  understood.  Exposition  is  here 
criticism.  The  work  w^as  fundamentally  vitiated,  falsified  in 
character  and  method,  by  its  starting-point  and  end.  It  pro- 
fessed to  be  critical,  but  was  throughout  a pure  creation  of 
the  philosophical  imagination.  Its  critical  theories  had  been 
created,  its  exegetical  method  was  applied,  to  work  out  a 
foregone  conclusion.  Certain  narratives,  which  were  regarded 
as  historical,  were  incompatible  with  a given  speculative 
doctrine,  and  blocked  the  way  to  a speculative  end.  So 
a critico-historical  theory  was  invented  to  disintegrate  the 
narratives  and  dissolve  the  facts.  And  as  was  the  genesis 
such  was  the  elaboration  of  the  work,  arbitrary,  daring,  skilful, 
most  dogmatic  where  it  ought  to  have  been  most  critical. 
The  man  was  a speculative,  constructive  thinker,  blind  to 
probabilities,  forcing  history  to  become  the  vehicle  of  an 
d priori  system.  The  criticism  never  becomes  scientific  ; 


’ “ Streitschriften,”  pt-  hi-.  P-  59- 


236  STRAUSS  NEITHER  HISTORIAN  NOR  CRITIC, 


realities  are  nothing,  idealities  everything.  The  critic  has  no 
historical  sense  ; seeks  only  to  abolish,  not  to  construct  or 
restore.  The  Person  whose  life  he  means  to  write  becomes 
shadowy,  illusive  ; escapes  us  almost  altogether.  We  follow 
from  negation  to  negation,  but  never  get  to  positive  or  sub- 
stantial fact  There  is  no  living  background,  no  actual  world 
of  loving,  hating,  thinking  men  : Jews  factional,  fanatical,  full 
of  hopes  created  by  the  written  Word,  of  thoughts  coined  in 
the  schools  and  circulated  by  tradition  ; Romans  supercili- 
ously pitiful  to  the  conquered,  contemptuously  indulging  the 
common  hatred  to  sectaries.  There  is  no  delicate  eye  for 
light  and  shade,  no  realizing  imagination,  no  attempt  to  live 
in  the  land  and  time  of  Jesus,  or  in  the  generation  when  the 
so-called  mythical  process  was  going  on  and  working  into 
final  form  in  the  evangelical  narratives.  The  great  realities 
for  Strauss  are  neither  the  narratives  nor  the  facts,  but  his 
antagonists,  the  older  critics  and  historians  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  theories  on  the  other.  He  never  forgets  his  specula- 
tive basis  and  conclusion,  his  critical  doubts,  his  mythical 
theory  as  means  to  the  end,  the  hard,  far-fetched  naturalistic 
explanations  of  Paulus,  the  strained  and  improbable  conjec- 
tures and  conjunctures  of  the  harmonists.  So  he  is  no  critical 
historian,  but  a dogmatic  controversialist,  in  the  might  of  a 
speculative  principle  so  bearing  down  upon  living  men  and 
living  beliefs  as  never  to  get  face  to  face  with  the  facts  that 
must  be  known  before  they  can  become  objects  of  thought. 
The  work  was  thus  least  scientific  where  most  negative,  and 
positive  only  where  speculative.  The  speculation  was  too 
violent  and  arbitrary  to  find  what  it  sought — the  universal  and 
permanent  truth  represented  by  the  history.  The  criticism 
cleared  the  ground,  of  old  critical  structures,  and  so  made 
new  ones  at  once  possible  and  necessary,  but  it  did  no  more. 

The  speculative  basis  on  which  Strauss  built  was  simply 
the  Hegelian  doctrine  of  the  Absolute,  specifically  developed 
and  applied.  The  disciple  narrowed  ideas  that  the  master 


BUT  A SPECULATIVE  PHILOSOPHER. 


237 


had  made  large  and  indefinite.  Hegel  meant  his  philosophy 
to  explain  what  had  been  and  is  ; Strauss  used  it  to  determine 
what  must  be  or  have  been.  The  eternal  process  became  the 
immanent  God  realizing  Himself  in  the  invariable  and  necessary 
order  of  nature.  Deity  was  impersonal,  miracle  impossible, 
and  so  the  supernatural  incredible.  The  chain  of  finite  causes 
was  inviolable.  Strauss  declared  that  philosophic  studies 
had  freed  him  in  feeling  and  thought  from  the  religious  and 
dogmatic  presuppositions  which  biassed  even  the  most  acute 
and  learned  theologians.  But  whether  speculative  are  more 
scientific  than  theological  assumptions  is  a question  which 
need  not  meanwhile  be  discussed. 

His  speculative  end  was  also  given  him  by  the  Hegelian 
philosophy.  The  evangelical  facts  expressed  in  the  sen- 
suous form  truths  which  he  wished  to  translate  into  the 
notional.  He  did  not  see  why  men  should  be  satisfied  with 
the  lower  when  they  could  by  a critico-speculative  process 
reach  the  higher  form.  So  he  considered  his  work  a real 
service  to  Christianity — at  least  the  ideal  and  absolute  Chris- 
tianity of  the  learned.  He  says  : “ The  author  knows  that  the 
essence  of  the  Christian  faith  is  entirely  independent  of  his 
critical  inquiries.  The  supernatural  birth  of  Christ,  His  miracles, 
His  resurrection  and  ascension,  remain  eternal  truths,  however 
much  their  reality  as  historical  facts  may  be  doubted.  Only 
the  certainty  of  this  can  give  to  our  criticism  calmness  and 
dignity.  . . . Inquiries  of  this  kind  may  inflict  a wound  on 
the  faith  of  individuals.  Should  this  be  the  case  with  theo- 
logians, they  have  in  their  science  the  medicine  for  such 
wounds,  as,  if  they  would  not  remain  behind  the  development 
of  their  age,  cannot  be  spared  them.  The  subject  is  not  yet, 
of  course,  properly  prepared  for  the  laity,  and  therefore  this 
book  has  been  so  written  that  unlearned  laymen  will  soon 
and  quickly  perceive  that  it  is  not  designed  for  them.”  ^ To 
the  uninitiated  the  old  facts  were  still  necessary  ; but  to  those 
* “ Leben  Jesu,”  Vorrede  (ist  ed.),  pp.  vi,  vii. 


238  CHRISTOLOGY  BECOMES  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

who  had  penetrated  into  the  Hegelian  penetralia,  the  mythical 
theory,  “ with  the  sacrifice  of  the  historical  reality  of  the 
narrative,  held  fast  its  absolute  truth.”  ^ 

What,  then,  was  the  eternal  truth  which  was  the  kernel  of 
the  historical  shell  thus  mercilessly  broken  and  cast  away? 
The  Hegelian  conception  so  construed  as  to  be  reduced  to 
consistency  ; in  other  words,  the  dismissal  of  the  historical 
Person  in  order  to  the  complete  articulation  of  the  idea.  The 
notion  of  the  God-man  was  universalized  ; the  attributes  which 
the  Church  had  ascribed  to  Christ  were  made  the  property 
of  the  race.  The  unity  of  the  Divine  and  human  natures 
was  realized  in  man,  not  in  a man.  The  Incarnation  was  the 
self-manifestation  of  God,  the  realization  of  the  Idea,  not  in 
a single  person,  but  in  humanity  ; not  at  a particular  point 
of  time,  but  from  eternity.  “ This  is  the  key  to  the  whole  of 
Christology,  that  as  subject  of  the  predicates  which  the  Church 
assigns  to  Christ  an  idea  is  set  for  an  individual,  but  a real 
idea  ; not  one  Kantian,  unreal,  subjective.  Conceived  in  an 
individual,  a God-man,  the  attributes  and  functions  which  the 
Church  doctrine  ascribes  to  Christ  contradict  each  other ; in 
the  idea  of  the  race  they  agree.  Humanity  is  the  union  of 
the  two  natures,  God  become  man,  the  infinite  Spirit  emptied 
into  the  finite,  and  the  finite  recollecting  its  infinitude. 
Humanity  is  the  child  of  the  visible  Mother  and  the  invisible 
Father — of  Nature  and  Spirit;  it  is  the  Miracle- Worker,  in 
so  far  as  in  the  course  of  human  history  the  Spirit  becomes 
ever  more  perfectly  Master  of  Nature,  which  is  forced  under 
it  as  inert  material  for  its  activity.  It  is  the  sinless,  inasmuch 
as  the  process  of  its  development  is  blameless  ; defilement 
cleaves  to  the  individual,  but  is,  in  the  species  and  its  history, 
abolished.  Humanity  is  the  one  that  dies,  rises  again,  and 
ascends  to  heaven,  since  from  the  negation  of  its  natural  there 
proceeds  always  a higher  spiritual  life  ; from  the  abolition  of 
its  finitude  a?  personal,  national,  and  earthly  spirit  there  issues 
* “Leben  Jesu,”  vol.  i.,  p.  52. 


GOD  INCARNATE  IN  MAN. 


239 


its  union  with  the  infinite  Spirit  of  heaven.  By  faith  in  this 
Christ,  especially  in  His  death  and  resurrection,  man  is  justified 
before  God  ; that  means,  the  individual  becomes  participant 
in  the  Divine-human  life  of  the  species,  by  having  the  idea  of 
humanity  created  and  vivified  within  him.  And  this  happens 
mainly  because  the  negation  of  the  natural,  which  is  itself  the 
negation  of  the  Spirit,  therefore  the  negation  of  the  negation, 
is  the  only  way  to  true  spiritual  life  for  man.”  ^ “ If  we  know 

the  Incarnation,  Death,  and  Resurrection,  the  duplex  negatio 
affirmat^  as  the  eternal  circulation,  the  endless  pulsation, 
always  repeating  itself,  of  the  Divine  life,  what  single  fact, 
which  is  but  a sensuous  symbol  of  this  process,  can  claim  pre- 
eminent importance  ? To  the  idea  in  the  fact,  to  the  race 
in  the  individual,  our  age  wishes  to  be  led.  A theological 
system,  which  in  its  doctrine  of  Christ  stands  by  Him  as  an 
individual,  is  no  system,  but  a sermon.”^ 

But  if  this  transcendental  construction  was  to  stand,  then 
the  historical  reality  of  the  evangelical  narratives  must  be 
sacrificed,  for  the  universal  could  not  assume  the  attributes 
of  the  particular  Person  if  He  were  to  remain,  in  the  full 
and  strict  sense,  an  historical  reality.  But  how  was  the 
sacrifice  to  be  performed  ? By  the  old  Deistic  method, 
which  charges  Jesus  with  unveracity  and  imposition,  the 
Evangelists  with  falsehood  and  fabrication?  To  adopt  it 
was  for  many  reasons  impossible.  It  was  a discredited  and 
discreditable  method,  had  broken  down  in  the  hands  of  the 
men  who  had  used  it.  Then  the  speculative  construction 
required  the  ideal  truth  of  the  facts,  the  ideal  veracity  of 
the  narratives.  To  translate  conscious  fictions  into  trans- 
cendental truths  had  been  to  build  an  elaborate  palace  on 
shifting  sands.  A system  which  claimed  to  be  true  could 
never  be  based  on  intentional  falsehoods.  A theory  thus 
became  necessary  which  sacrificed  the  letter,  but  retained 

^ “Leben  Jesu,”  vol  ii.,  pp.  734,  735. 

* Ibid.,  p.  738. 


240 


THE  MYTHICAL  THEORY. 


the  Spirit ; denied  the  real,  but  affirmed  the  ideal  truth  of 
the  Gospels.  The  mythical  theory  seemed  to  do  so — exactly 
fitted  the  mechanism  of  the  work.  It  made  the  evangelical 

o 

facts  unconscious  creations — the  symbols  or  investitures  of 
primitive  Christian  ideas.  The  creations  were  unconscious, 
and  so  written  down  as  historical  in  all  good  faith.  They 
were  the  products  of  the  collective  spirit  of  a people  or 
Church,  and  so  clothed  or  expressed  their  actual  thoughts 
and  beliefs.  The  myths  were  created  by  the  normal  action 
of  the  spirit,  and  so  while  historically  false  were  ideally  true. 
The  theory  needed  but  a small  substratum  of  reality.  It 
was  only  necessary  to  believe  that  Jesus  had  grown  up  at 
Nazareth,  had  been  baptized  by  John,  had  called  disciples, 
gone  about  Judea  teaching,  set  Himself  against  the  Pharisees, 
introduced  the  Messianic  kingdom,  and  been  crucified — the 
victim  of  Pharisaic  hate.^  His  death  disappointed  but  did 
not  disperse  the  disciples.  They  had  Oriental  imaginations 
and  Jewish  hopes.  Their  literature  and  traditions  were  full 
of  promises  and  prophecies  to  be  fulfilled  in  the  Messiah, 
and  these  so  mingled  with  their  reminiscences  and  thoughts 
of  Jesus  that  the  attributes  and  actions  of  the  ideal  became 
those  of  the  actual  person.  The  Messiah  of  their  dreams 
and  desires  was  gradually  rounded  into  the  historical  Christ, 
Plis  character  adorned  with  the  qualities.  His  life  with  the 
achievements,  His  mission  with  the  ends  attributed  to  the 
long-predicted  and  long-expected  national  Deliverer.  The 
Messiah  was  to  be  a lawgiver,  prophet,  priest,  and  king,  and 
Jesus  was  represented  as  having  been  or  being  each  of  these, 
in  each  pre-eminent  over  all  His  predecessors.  The  shining 
of  the  face  of  Moses  was  eclipsed  by  the  Transfiguration. 
The  miracles  of  Elijah  and  Elisha  suggested,  but  paled 
before,  the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand,  the  raising  of  the 
dead,  and  the  Ascension.  Whatever  extraordinary  thing  Jesus 


* Leben  Jesu,”  vol.  i.,  p,  72. 


HISTORY  DISSOLVED  BUT  TRUTH  PRESERVED.  241 


said  or  did  had  its  suggestive  source  in  the  Old  Testament 
or  tradition.  He  was  little  more  than  a lay  figure  dressed 
out  in  Messianic  prerogatives.  The  mythical  theory,  indeed, 
did  with  prophecy  very  much  what  evolution  has  done  with 
design.  The  Messianic  hope,  struggling  under  certain  con- 
ditions for  life,  made  Jesus  into  the  Christ. 

Strauss  elaborated  his  hypothesis  with  extraordinary  inge- 
nuity. The  air  was  full  of  mythological  theories.  Wolf’s 
“ Prolegomena”  had  started  many  questions — critical,  mythical, 
religious — as  to  the  Homeric  poems  and  primitive  Greece. 
Niebuhr  had  carried  a new  light  into  the  history  of  ancient 
Rome.  Heyne  had  enunciated  the  principle,  ^ mythis  omnis 
priscorum  hominum  cum  historia  turn  philosopJda  procedit ; and 
he  and  Hermann  had,  though  under  specific  differences,  re- 
solved mythology  into  a consciously  invented  and  elaborately 
concealed  science  of  nature  and  man.  Creuzer  had  made  it 
a religious  symbolism,  under  which  was  hidden  an  earlier 
and  purer  faith.  Ottfried  Muller,  in  a finer  and  more  scien- 
tific spirit,  had  explained  myths  as  created  by  the  reciprocal 
action  of  two  factors,  the  real  and  ideal,  and  had  traced  in 
certain  cases  their  rise  even  in  the  historical  period.  The 
same  tendency  had  existed  in  Scriptural  as  in  classical  studies. 
Mythical  interpretations  had  been  applied  long  before  to 
certain  sections  of  the  Old  Testament.  Eichhorn  and  Bauer, 
Vater  and  De  Wette,  had  employed  it  with  greater  or  less 
freedom  and  thoroughness.  It  had  even  been  carried  into 
the  New  Testament,  and  made  to  explain  the  earlier  and 
later  events  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  those  prior  to  the  Temptation, 
and  those  subsequent  to  the  Crucifixion.  Strauss  thus  only 
universalized  a method  which  had  been  in  partial  operation 
before ; made  the  myth,  instead  of  a portal  to  enter  and 
leave  the  Gospels,  a comprehensive  name  for  the  whole.  In 
doing  so  it  was  not  enough  to  build  on  old  foundations. 
The  enormous  extension  of  the  structure  needed  a corre- 
sponding extension  of  the  base.  The  man  could  not  but 

16 


242 


THE  CRITICISM  OF  PANIC 


fail  at  the  end  whose  work  at  the  beginning  was  not  simply 
ill  done  but  not  done  at  all. 

§ III. — The  Counter  Criticism. 

In  order  to  complete  our  history  and  analysis  of  the  book, 
it  will  be  necessary  to  throw  a hurried  glance  over  the  five 
stormful  years  that  followed  its  appearance.  It  was  the 
signal  for  the  outbreak  of  an  angry  and  bewildered  contro- 
versy of  the  sort  distinctive  of  religious  panics.  Men  known 
and  unknown,  schools  old  and  new,  clergy  and  laity,  every 
one  who  could  carry  a stick  or  even  spring  a rattle,^  joined 
in  the  meUe.  The  Prussian  Government  proposed  to  place 
the  book  under  ban,  but  Neander  protested:  “Let  it  be 
answered  by  argument,  not  by  authority.”  The  Pietists  and 
High  Lutherans  hailed  it  as  the  caput  mortuum  of  the  specu- 
lative and  critical  schools,  and  began  the  reaction  they  called 
revival.  The  Hegelians,  anxious  to  disown  their  too  radical 
confrhe,  made  a valiant  effort  to  affiliate  him  to  Schleier- 
macher,  but  the  sons  of  the  divine  victoriously  vindicated 
his  true  descent.  And  the  storm  of  words  did  not  come 
alone  ; more  material  penalties  followed.  Strauss  was  cast 
out  of  the  university  where  he  had  given  and  tasted  the 
promise  of  a brilliant  career,  and  had  to  face  a world 
which  had  for  him  little  praise  and  less  promise.  He  was 
not  a man  to  bear  criticism  in  silence,  and  his  speech 
now  was  most  characteristic.  He  replied  to  his  critics  by 
counter-criticism,  repelled  their  assault  by  assailing  them- 
selves. He  selected  from  the  hosts  opposed  to  him  certain 
men,  representatives  of  various  tendencies,  and  fell  on  them 
in  the  most  vigorous  way.  The  selected  were  Steudel, 
Tubingen  professor,  supernaturalist,  and  traditional  theo- 
logian ; Eschenmayer,  philosopher  and  physician,  a believer 
in  animal  magnetism,  demoniacal  possession,  and  other  things 

^ “ Das  Leben  Jesu  fiir  das  Deutsche  Volk,”  p,  157. 


WHAT  WAS  SAID  BY  IT  AND  TO  IT. 


243 


ghostly  ; Wolfgang  Menzel,  literary  critic  and  mythologist,  a 
layman  who  acted  the  severe  moralist ; Hengstenberg,  High 
Lutheran,  standing  by  the  letter  of  the  Scriptures  and  the 
creeds ; Bruno  Bauer,  just  beginning  his  changeful  career, 
for  the  moment  an  orthodox  Hegelian,  conciliator  of  know- 
ledge and  faith ; Ullmann,  a theologian,  modern,  irenical, 
anxious  to  give  to  reason  the  things  that  are  reason’s,  to 
faith  the  things  that  are  faith’s. 

Strauss’s  criticism,^  save  in  Ullmann’s  case,  to  whom  he 
was  studiously  courteous,  spared  neither  the  men  nor  their 
writings.  Steudel,  dolorous,  incompetent,  was  a Pietist  per- 
meated with  Rationalism,  heir  to  a past  he  had  not  mind 
enough  to  inherit  or  courage  to  renounce ; Eschenmayer 
was  but  a succession  of  ever-repeated  incoherences  and  con- 
tradictions ; Menzel  was  a literary  Ishmaelite,  a critic  without 
insight,  who  but  blundered  when  he  judged  ; Hengstenberg 
was  full  of  latent  Pantheism  ; and  Bruno  Bauer  under- 

^ The  replies  and  counter-criticisms,  first  published  in  1837,  were  in 
1841  issued  in  a collective  form  under  the  title:  “ Streitschriften  zur 
Vertheidigung  meiner  Schrift  fiber  das  Leben  Jesu  und  zur  Charakteristik 
der  gegenwartigen  Theologie.”  The  replies  were  in  three  parts.  The 
first  was  the  answer  to  Steudel  and  his  school,  that  of  a rational  and 
reasoned  supernaturalism,  and  was  certainly  a very  merciless  exposure  of 
the  self-illusions  it  had  indulged.  The  second  part  contained  the  reply 
to  Eschenmayer  and  Menzel.  Eschenmayer  is  best  known  by  his  con- 
tributing through  Schelling  to  the  alliance  of  Natural  and  Transcendental 
Philosophy.  He  and  Strauss  met  as  antagonists  on  another  field — 
spiritualism,  or  what  would  be  now  so  called.  Eschenmayer,  in  a book 
on  “ The  Conflict  between  Heaven  and  Hell,”  sketched  in  a distantly 
Dantesque  style  the  nether  regions,  where  he  places  those  who  corrupt 
and  falsify  the  Word,  assail,  den}^  and  blaspheme  the  Son  of  man  Him- 
self. There,  of  course,  Iscariot  is  sent,  and  the  Mythicists  in  general, 
who  cry,  “ Great  is  the  Goddess  Idea  of  Berlin.”  Strauss  thought  such 
superfine  wit  imbecile  and  laughable  where  not  disgusting  (v.  “ Charakter.  u. 
Krit.,”  pp.355,  376).  The  third  part  contained  answers  to  Hengstenberg,  the 
Hrgelians,  and  the  theologians  of  the  conciliatory  school,  the  men  of  the 
“Studien  u.  Kritiken.”  The  criticism  of  the  Hegelians  is  of  considerable 
autobiographical  worth,  and  the  letter  to  Ullmann  is  most  pacific  in  tone 
and  purport.  A positive  and  constructive  part  was  intended  to  follow, 
but  it  was  embodied  in  the  third  edition  of  the  “ Leben  Jesu.” 


244 


ESCHENMAYER,  MENZEL,  HENGSTENBERG, 


Stood  neither  Hegel  nor  theology.  Literary  amenities  seldom 
distinguish  theological  controversies,  but  in  this  case  the 
truculence  was  transcendent.  Strauss  compared  his  critics 
to  women  set  a-screaming  by  the  going  off  of  a gun.' 
Eschenmayer,  who  had  denounced  him  as  the  modern 
Iscariot,  guilty  of  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost,^  was 
described  as  no  inspired  man  of  God,  the  Spirit  not  being 
given  to  plagiarism,  even  from  himself,^  while  his  book  was 
characterized  as  the  child,  born  in  lawful  wedlock,  of  theo- 
logical ignorance  and  religious  intolerance,  consecrated  by  a 
somnambulating  philosophy.''  Wolfgang  Menzel  thought  his 
author  like  the  devil,  without  conscience,®  and  Strauss  could 
not  read  Bruno  Bauer’s  speculations  without  feeling  as  if  he 
were  in  the  witches’  kitchen  in  Faust,  listening  to  the  clatter 
of  a whole  choir  of  a hundred  thousand  fools.®  Hengstenberg 
said  the  prophecy  of  Lichtenberg  was  fulfilled — the  world 
had  got  so  fine  as  to  think  the  belief  in  God  as  ridiculous 
as  the  belief  in  ghosts.^  Strauss  was  a man  without  a heart, 
or  had  one  like  Leviathan  ® — “ as  firm  as  a stone,  and  hard 
as  a piece  of  the  nether  millstone.”  But,  in  this  case,  behind 
the  verbal  ferocities  was  a mind  that  knew  the  enemy  it 
faced,  and  delighted  in  his  absolute  antagonism.  Hengsten- 
berg thoroughly  understood  the  “ Leben  Jesu.”  To  vanquish 
its  speculative  Pantheism  the  old  Lutheran  theology  must 
be  revived,  subscription  to  the  confessions,  in  their  literal 
sense,  enforced.  To  conquer  the  mythical  theory,  historical 
reality  must  be  claimed  for  the  narratives  alike  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments.  If  it  was  allowed  a foothold  in  the 

^ “Leben  Jesu,”  2 Aufl.,  Vor. 

2 “ Streitschriften,”  pt.  ii.,  p.  3.  Eschenmayer’s  critique  bore  the  title 
“ The  Iscariotism  of  our  Day.” 

^ “ Streitschriften,”  pt.  ii.,  p.  lo. 

^ “ Leben  Jesu  ” (ist  ed.),  vol.  ii.,  Vor, 

* “Streitschriften,”  pt.  ii.,  p.  3. 

® Ibid.,  pt.  ii.,  p.  109. 

^ Ibid.,  pt.  iii.,  p.  9. 

• Ibid.,  pt.  iii.,  p.  18, 


THOLUCK,  AND  SCHWEITZER. 


245 


one,  it  could  not  be  held  out  of  the  other.  The  spirit  of  the 
age  was  to  be  met  not  by  conciliation,  but  by  contradiction. 
To  mediate  was  to  be  faithless.  The  Church,  suckled  on  its 
old  creeds,  was  to  do  its  old  work.  The  strength  given  by 
a narrow  aim  and  definite  belief  favoured  for  a while  thel 
reaction  ; but  the  times  proved  too  strong  even  for  Hengsten-I 
berg.  Churches,  after  an  intellectual  revolution,  can  as  little 
return  to  their  old  confessions  as  countries,  after  a political, 
can  go  back  to  their  old  constitutions. 

Relevant  criticism  was  at  first  hardly  possible.  But  two 
or  three  attempts  at  it  showed  insight.  Tholuck  ^ achieved 
more  than  a brilliant  occasional  success,  and  struck  Strauss 
on  his  weakest  point.  He  argued  that  a critical  theory  of 
the  history  must  rest  on  a scientific  criticism  of  the  Gospels, 
and  therefore  that  the  inadequate  criticism  of  the  sources 
made  the  critical  life  of  Jesus  uncritical,  left  its  mythical 
theory  a castle  in  the  air.  Strauss  flung  a scornful  compli- 
mentary sneer  at  the  high  horse  of  his  many-sidedness,^  the 
jewelled  spoils  from  the  ancient  and  modern  classics  sprinkled 
over  his  pages,^  but  the  sting  in  the  sneer  did  not  neutralize 
the  sting  in  the  criticism.  Alexander  Schweitzer,^  leader  of 
Schleiermacher’s  left  wing,  took  another  line  : Persons  were 
the  main  factors  of  change  and  progress  in  history.  It  was 
not  true  that  the  first  was  often  the  least  and  the  last  the 
most  perfect  form  in  an  historical  process  ; the  reverse  was 
more  often  the  case.  Personal  attributes  transferred  to  the  race 
were  mere  figures  of  speech— abstract,  impotent,  capable  of 
nothing  but  exercising  the  mind  ; they  must  be  concentrated 
in  a person  if  they  are  to  mean  or  to  accomplish  anything. 

* “ Die  Glaubwiirdigkeit  der  Evangel.  Geschichte,”  1837.  F.  C.  Baur, 
whose  own  criticism  Tholuck  in  a dim  way  anticipated,  later  characterized 
this  book  as  “a  masterpiece  of  scientific  charlatanry  and  pettifogging” 
(Rabulisterei)  “ Kirchengesch.  des  Neunzehn,  Jahrh.,”  p.  367. 

* “ Leben  Jesu  ” (3rd  ed.),  Vor.,  p.  iv. 

* “ Streitschriften,”  pt.  iii.,  p.  13. 

* “Studien  u.  Kritiken,”  1837,  pp.  459-5  lO. 


246  DE  WETTE,  ULLMANN,  NEANDER. 

He  thus  argued  for  the  historicity  of  Christ  by  vindicat- 
ing the  reality  and  rights  of  creative  personalities  in  every 
province  of  thought  and  action,  but  especially  the  religious. 
The  Founder  made  the  religion,  not  the  religion  the  Founder. 
Its  eminence  was  but  a reflection  and  consequence  of  His. 
Individual  genius  was  here  as  everywhere  the  creative  force. 
De  Wette,^  the  then  most  authoritative  critic  in  the  depart- 
ment of  sacred  literature,  pronounced  against  the  uncritical 
method  and  position  of  the  “ Leben  Jesu,”  especially  as  to 
the  Fourth  Gospel.  Ullmann  ^ criticised  the  mythical  theory, 
analysed  the  idea  of  myth,  distinguished  its  varieties,  argued 
that  the  Gospels  may  be  histories  with  mythical  elements 
without  being  mythical  histories.  Nor  were  they  our  only 
sources.  Outside  the  Gospels  were  most  important  witnesses. 
There  was  Paul,  a writer  of  epistles  full  of  history,  a history  in 
himself,  man  and  system  alike  being  in  need  of  explanation  ; 
not  capable  of  being  explained  if  the  Christ  he  so  trusted, 
served,  interpreted,  had  been  only  an  obscure  rabbi  of 
Nazareth  in  process  of  formation  into  a transcendental  object 
of  faith  by  the  mythicizing  imagination.  Then,  too,  there 
was  the  primitive  Church,  an  historical  reality  if  such  a thing 
ever  was — how  could  it  be  what  we  know  it  to  have  been 
if  its  faith  and  all  its  creative  facts  were  but  dreams  of  an 
idealizmg  spirit?  Paul  and  the  primitive  Church  had  been 
ignored,  but  they  show  a faith  rooted  in  fact.  Christ  created 
the  Church,  not  the  Church  Christ  ; the  seed  grew  into  the 
plant,  not  the  plant  into  the  seed.  Neander^  opposed  the 
historical  to  the  mythical  Christ.  He  was  arbitrary  and 
subjective,  too  anxious  to  find  an  ideal  and  modern  in  the 
real  and  ancient  Christ,  expected  too  much  from  a change 
of  the  contra-  into  the  supra-natural.  But  his  work  had 

1 “ Erklarung  des  Ev.  Johannis,”  Schlussbetrachtung.”  Cf.  “Leben  Jesu,’ 
(3rd.  ed.),  Vor.  ; “ Charak.  u.  Krit.,”  Vor. 

2 “ Studien  iind  Krit,”  1836,  pp.  776  If. 

3 Neander,  “ Das  Leben  Jesu  Christi,”  1837. 


STRAUSS  MAKES  CONCESSIONS. 


247. 


one  pre-eminent  quality — it  was  an  honest  effort,  marked  by 
sympathetic  insight  into  the  character  portrayed,  to  get  face 
to  face  with  the  facts,  to  construe  evangelical  as  actual 
history  ; and  so  it  tended  to  create  in  the  reader  a con- 
sciousness of  reality  that  could  confront  the  mythical  theory 
undismayed. 

§ IV. — Concessions  and  Conclusion. 

As  the  controversy  proceeded  some  points  personal  to 
Strauss  emerged,  which  are  not  without  historical  interest. 
He  defended  his  work  as  a scientific  search  after  truth,  and  for 
science  there  did  not  exist  the  holy,  but  only  the  true.^  He 
was  not  the  enemy,  but  the  apologist,  of  the  Christian  faith, 
and  had  proved  its  essence  independent  of  critical  inquiries. 
He  had  not  wished  to  destroy  the  faith  of  the  people,  only 
to  translate  its  transcendental  matter  into  a scientific  form. 
Hence  he  had  written  for  the  learned  alone.  Why  not  in 
Latin  then  ? ^ That  had  been  to  put  new  wine  into  old 
bottles,  with  the  usual  certain  result.  He  did  not  mean  to 
be  unchurched,  was  thoroughly  happy  and  at  home  in  the 
Christian  religion  ; could  be  refreshed  in  spirit  from  its  old 
yet  perennially  young  sources.^  The  critic  did  not  write  for 
edification,  but  for  science  ; and  science,  while  it  denied  the 
reality  of  the  facts,  affirmed  the  reality  of  the  faith.  Miracles 
were  unreal,  but  the  faith  in  them  was  not.  The  great  point 
was  not  the  occurrence  of  the  Resurrection,  but  the  belief  in 
it."^  He  wished  the  clergy  to  preach  Christ,  not  Schleier- 
macher  and  Hegel.  But  the  irenical  spirit  apparent  in  these 
personal  apologetics  soon  became  much  more  pronounced. 
The  consensus  eruditormn^  joined  with  his  present  loneliness 

* “ Streitschriften,”  pt.  i.,  p.  92. 

* Ibid.^  pt.  i.,  p.  88  ; pt.  iii.,  p.  132. 

* Ibid.^  pt.  i.,  p.  9. 

^ Ibid.^  pt.  i.,  pp.  33-48;  pt.  iii.,  p.  41.  This  position  was  later  elabo- 
borated  by  Baur, 


248 


JESUS  THE  RELIGIOUS  GENIUS, 


and  cheerless  outlook  for  the  future,  constrained  him  into 
concessions  and  efforts  at  conciliation.  In  his  third  “ Streit- 
schrift”  (1837),  in  the  third  edition  of  his  “ Leben  Jesu  ” 
(1838),  and  in  the  “ Zwei  Friedliche  Blatter”  (1839),  he 
successively  and  increasingly  modified  the  cardinal  points  of 
his  position,  the  criticism  of  the  sources,  the  mythical  theory, 
and  the  speculative  Christology. 

In  the  third  edition  of  the  “ Leben  ” the  critical  attitude  to 
the  Fourth  Gospel  was  changed.  Strauss  confessed  that  his 
zeal  against  the  theologians  had  made  him  unjust  to  John  ; he 
now  doubted  his  own  denials,  could  as  little  say  John’s  Gospel 
is  genuine  as  that  it  is  spurious.^  And  with  these  doubts  as 
to  the  sources,  the  mythical  theory  could  hardly  retain  its 
old  rigour.  Jesus  became  more  historical  ; his  speeches,  even 
the  Johannine  discourses,  more  genuine,  the  latter  giving,  not 
the  master’s  ipsissima  vei'ha^  but  the  ideas  they  had  given 
to  the  scholar.^  But  the  less  nebulous  Jesus  grew,  the  more 
extraordinary  He  became  ; as  the  range  of  the  unconsciously 
creative  phantasy  was  limited,  the  reality  of  the  consciously 
creative  person  was  increased.  While  the  speculative  Chris- 
tology was  allowed  to  stand,  the  individual  had  his  rights 
conceded  by  Jesus  being  raised  into  the  world’s  pre-eminent 
religious  genius,  creator  of  the  Church,  maker  of  Christianity, 
the  empirical  or  real  as  distinguished  from  the  absolute  or 
ideal  Christ.  At  the  head  of  all  world-historical  events 
individuals  stood,  were  the  subjectivities  through  whom  the 
absolute  substance  was  realized.^  In  the  field  of  religion, 
especially  where  Monotheistic,  the  grand  creative  forces  had 
been  individuals.  And  Christianity  was  the  product  of  a 
creative  individuality.  “ Certainly  this  does  not  again  bring 
Christ  into  the  peculiar  Christian  sanctuary,  but  only  places 

1 “ Leben  Jesu  ” (3rd  ed.),  Vor,,  p.  v. 

2 Ibid.^  vol.  ii.,  p.  740. 

^ Ibid.,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  770-779.  This  conciliatory  and  conclusory  chapter 
embodied  the  views  and  modifications  of  the  third  “ Streitschrift,”  and 
replaced  a chapter  in  the  first  edition  which  had  given  special  offence. 


SUPREME  IN  HIS  OWN  ORDER. 


249 


him  in  the  chapel  of  Alexander  Severus,  where,  with  Orpheus 
and  Homer,  he  has  to  stand  beside  not  only  Moses,  but 
also  Mohammed,  and  must  not  be  ashamed  of  the  society  of 
Alexander  and  Caesar,  Raphael  and  Mozart.”  But  this  dis- 
quieting co-ordination  was  qualified  by  two  considerations  : 
first,  religion  is  not  only  the  highest  province  in  which  the 
Divine  creative  power  of  genius  can  be  manifested,  but  is 
related  to  the  others  as  centre  to  circumference.  Of  the 
religious  genius  in  a sense  quite  inapplicable  to  poet  or 
philosopher  can  it  be  said,  “ God  reveals  Himself  in  him.” 
Secondly,  as  Christianity  is  the  highest  religion  its  Author  is 
supreme  in  the  circle  of  religious  creators. 

But  this  new  standpoint  received  its  most  perfect  expres- 
sion in  the  second  of  the  “ Zwei  Friedliche  Blatter.”^  This 
is  one  of  Strauss’s  most  perfect  compositions,  an  irenical 
soliloquy,  a far-off  echo  of  Schleiermacher’s  “ Monologen  ” 
and  “ Reden,”  which  muffled,  as  it  were,  the  sigh  for  peace 
of  a man  who  was  trying  to  conquer  his  own  worst  doubts, 
and  wished  to  live  in  friendship  with  the  new  culture  and 
the  old  faith.  Culture  seemed  to  him  to  be  not  so  much 
hostile  as  indifferent  to  faith  ; and  for  Christianity  to  become 
superfluous  was  worse  than  to  be  vanquished.  As  a child 
of  the  culture,  who  had  also  been  a son  of  the  old  faith, 
he  could  not  but  seek  to  reconcile  the  two,  especially  as  a 
basis  existed  in  a philosophy  which  was  more  Christian  than 
primitive  Christianity,  conceived  God  and  man  as  united,  not 
at  one  or  a few  points,  but  everywhere  and  always.  The 
new  spirit  could  not  believe  in  everlasting  rewards  and 
penalties  ; could  be  moral  without  them  ; needed  only  an 
immortality  of  conscious  growth.  The  resurrection  of  Christ 
was  an  eternal  and  ideal  truth  clothed  in  a form  suitable  to 

‘ “ Vergangliches  und  Bleibendes  im  Christenthum ” (“The  Transitory 
and  Permanent  in  Christianity”).  It  was  published  in  1839  along  with  a 
genial  and  beautiful  paper  on  Justinus  Kerner,  Strauss’  mystic  friend,  but 
had  first  appeared  the  year  before  in  the  “ Freihaven”;  in  1845  an  English 
translation  was  published. 


250 


THE  WORSHIP  OF  GENIUS 


childhood,  but  without  worth  for  manhood.  His  death  was 
no  atonement,  only  the  absolute  submission  of  a righteous 
spirit  to  God.  His  w^orks  were  not  miracles,  the  iniraculum 
was  only  the  mirabile.  The  Incarnation  was  incompatible 
with  the  nature  of  God,  who  could  be  revealed  in  a single 
person  as  little  as  the  essence  of  harmony  in  a single  tune* 
‘‘  The  only  worship — one  may  lament  or  praise  but  cannot 
deny  it — the  only  worship  which  from  the  religious  ruins 
of  the  past  remains  to  the  cultured  mind  of  to-day  is  the 
worship  of  genius.”^  Must,  therefore,  the  doom  of  Chris- 
tianity be  written?  No;  Christ  descends  from  the  throne 
of  Divine  Sonship  only  to  assume  the  sovereignty  of  religious 
genius.  Genius  redeems  and  rules  the  world,  saves  humanity 
from  ignorance  and  impotence,  and  helps  it  to  realize  its 
ideal.  Religion  is  the  highest  creation  of  spirit,  Christianity 
the  highest  religion,  and  Jesus  the  supreme  genius  of  the 
world,  who  never  has  been,  never  can  be,  either  in  kind  or 
degree,  surpassed.  Beyond  Him  no  future  can  go: — 

“ As  little  as  man  will  ever  be  without  religion  will  he  be 
without  Christ.  For  to  think  to  have  religion  without  Christ 
were  no  less  absurd  than  to  think  to  enjoy  poetry  irrespective 
of  Homer,  Shakespeare,  and  their  kind.  And  this  Christ, 
so  far  as  He  is  inseparable  from  the  highest  form  of  religion, 
is  an  historical,  not  a mythical,  person,  a real  individual, 
no  mere  symbol.”  ^ 

“There  is  no  fear  that  He  will  be  lost  to  us,  even  though 
we  are  forced  to  surrender  much  that  has  been  hitherto 
named  Christianity.  He  remains  to  us  and  to  all  the  more 
secure  and  stable  the  less  we  anxiously  hold  fast  doctrines 
and  opinions  which  may  be  to  thought  an  occasion  ol 
apostasy.  But  if  Christ  remains  to  us — remains,  too,  as  the 
highest  we  know  and  can  conceive  in  things  religious,  as 
He  without  whose  presence  in  the  heart  no  perfect  piety 

» P.  io6. 

• P.  131. 


NO  WORSHIP  OF  CHRIST. 


25 


is  possible — then  there  also  remains  to  us  in  Him  the  essential 
truth  of  Christianity.”  ^ 

But  Strauss’s  career  as  the  prophet  of  Christ,  the  religious 
genius,  was  doomed  to  find  sudden  pause.  His  irenical 
attitude  was  too  full  of  incompatibilities  to  be  long  main- 
tained. The  notion  that  the  first  could  be  the  most  perfect 
form  in  religion,  or  any  other  creation  of  spirit,  was  alien 
to  the  Hegelian  philosophy  as  Strauss  had  construed  it.  His 
new  conception  of  Christ  involved  admissions  as  to  the 
Gospels  fatal  alike  to  the  mythical  theory  and  the  critical 
conclusions  that  made  it  possible.  It  was  an  approach  to 
Schleiermacher,  Alexander  Schweitzer  more  than  hinting 
that  it  was  a crib  from  himself.  It  was  neither  an  appro- 
priate termination  to  the  old  structure,  nor  a buttress  built 
to  support  its  weakest  side,  but  simply  a fragment  from  a 
foreign  school  of  architecture  planted  against  the  outer  wall, 
a pillar  from  the  florid  Gothic  cathedral  of  the  Romanticists 
placed  at  the  end  of  the  severe  and  classic  temple  of  the 
new  philosophy.  And  the  pillar  was  in  a new  revolution  of 
thought,  coincident  with  a revulsion  of  feeling,  cast  down 
and  thrown  out.  In  the  spring  of  1839  Strauss  was  invited 
to  a professorship  at  Zurich.  The  election  was  the  work 
of  the  Radicals,  who  were  then  in  power.  It  alarmed  the 
Church  ; the  clergy  roused  the  people  to  revolt  and  political 
reaction.  Strauss  strove  to  assuage  the  storm,  explained  he 
did  not  mean  “ to  use  the  position  given  him  in  the  uni- 
versity to  undermine  the  established  religion,”  or  “ to  disturb 
the  Church  in  her  faith  and  worship.”  He  meant  to  hold 
himself  “ within  the  limits  of  his  scientific  vocation,”  and 
“ endeavour  to  make  the  fundamental  Christian  verities 
esteemed.”  But  the  oil  did  not  smooth  the  waters,  and 
Strauss  soon  ceased  to  pour  it.^ 

* P.  132. 

2 The  letters  connected  with  the  Zurich  affair  throw  considerable 
light  on  the  irenical  attitude  and  mental  history  of  Strauss.  They 


252 


THE  CONCESSIONS  RECALLED. 


Whether  he  would  or  could  have  fulfilled  his  scientific 
vocation  without  disturbing  the  Church  or  its  faith  is  a 
matter  on  which  it  is  useless  to  speculate.  He  had  hardly 
the  stuff  in  him  to  be  an  exoteric  Conservative  while  an 
esoteric  Radical.  Our  modern  instincts  are  against  the 
opinion  Augustine  attributes  to  Varro  : “ Multa  esse  vera, 
quae  non  modo  vulgo  scire  non  sit  utile,  sed  etiam  tametsi 
falsa  sunt,  aliter  existimare  populum  expediat.”^  Last 
century,  indeed,  knew  more  than  one  professor  a Voltaire 
pj'ivathn^  but  a Warburton  publice.  The  relations  between 
conviction  and  expression  in  our  century  are — though  not 
what  they  ought  to  be — healthier  and  more  honest.  Later 
on  Strauss  admired  in  Reimarus  “ the  martyrdom  of  silence  ” ^ 
which  the  Deist  suffered  that  he  might  enjoy  the  fame  and 
emoluments  of  a Christian.  But  he  himself  was  saved  by  the 
Zurich  affair  from  a similar  or  worse  martyrdom.  The  preface 
to  the  irenical  “ Blatter”  is  dated  March  15th,  1839  ; his  call  to 
Zurich  was  cancelled  March  i8th,  and  in  the  August  follow- 
ing, in  the  preface  to  his  “ Charakteristiken  und  Kritiken,”^ 
he  withdrew  his  critical  concessions  and  all  they  implied. 
Next  year  the  “ Leben  Jesu  ” came  out  in  a fourth  edition,'^ 
purged  from  everything  concessive  and  irenical ; the  section 

may  be  found  in  a very  wooden  and  wearisome  little  book : Boden’s 
“ Geschichte  der  Berufung  des  Dr.  Strauss  an  die  Hochschule  von  Zurich,” 
1840.  Cf.  Hausrath’s  " David  Friedrich  Strauss  und  die  Theologie  seiner 
Zeit,”  vol.  i.,  apps.  iv.-xi. 

^ “ De  Civitate  Dei,”  lib.  iv.,  c.  xxxi. 

2 “ H.  S.  Reimarus  und  seine  Schutzschrift  fiir  die  vernunftigen  Verehrer 
Gottes,”  p.  6. 

^ The  volume  contains  his  early  essays  in  three  divisions : Theology, 
Belles  Lettres,  and  the  Night-side  of  Nature,  or  Spiritualism.  The  essay 
of  greatest  value  is  one  on  Schleiermacher  and  Daub,  marked  by  genial 
insight,  nice  discrimination,  grace,  and  force  of  style. 

^ On  this  edition  Strauss  used  to  look  back  with  pleasure  as  giving  the 
fullest  and  most  adequate  expression  of  his  early  views.  The  English 
translation  by  Miss  Evans,  published  in  three  volumes  by  Chapman  (1841), 
is  from  this  edition.  The  third  edition  was  also  translated  into  English^ 
but  in  a second-hand  way  from  the  French.  It  could  find  no  London 
publisher,  but  made  its  appearance  at  Birmingham. 


THE  MYTHICAL  THEORY  REAFFIRMED. 


253 


on  Christ  the  religious  genius  omitted,  the  Fourth  Gospel 
pronounced  spurious,  its  discourses  “ free  compositions  of  the 
Evangelist.”  He  was  in  those  days  caustically  compared 
to  a physician  who  rushed  from  his  house,  sword  in  hand, 
and  assailed  the  people  passing  along  the  street ; but  who, 
taking  fright  at  seeing  so  many  done  almost  to  death, 
retreated  within  doors,  though  only  to  sally  forth  the  next 
moment,  bandages  in  hand,  to  bind  up  his  victims. 


4 


CHAPTER  HI. 


LITERARY  CRITICISM.— THE  TUBINGEN  SCHOOL. 

WE  have  seen  how  speculation  made  historical  criticism 
necessary ; we  have  now  to  see  how  the  criticism 
corrected  the  speculation,  especially  during  the  years  1840-60 
when  the  Tubingen  criticism  reigned. 

§ I. — The  Critical  Problem  and  Christology. 

The  “ Leben  Jesu”  had  indeed  accomplished  a revolu- 
tion ; up  till  its  appearance  the  speculative  construction 
of  Christ’s  person  had  been  the  main  thing,  but  now  the 
supreme  problem  was  His  historical  reality.  His  place  and 
function  in  history,  the  character  and  claims  of  the  litera- 
ture which  described  Him  and  the  society  He  founded.  It 
was  a new  thing  to  see  the  most  rational  of  all  tran- 
scendental philosophies  culminating  in  a doctrine  of  the 
Incarnation,  and  through  it  reading  all  religions  and  the 
whole  of  history.  But  it  was  due  to  two  things  : (i)  the 
larger  and  more  constructive  spirit  of  the  new  philosophy, 
which  saw  it  must  explain  not  simply  physical  nature  and 
the  individual  man  in  their  correlated  being  and  reciprocal 
action,  but  the  whole  of  nature  and  the  whole  of  man  alike 
in  the  past  which  represented  his  becoming  and  in  the 
present  which  represents  what  he  has  become  ; (2)  the  new 
knowledge  and  quickened  imagination  which  had  so  enlarged 
the  past  and  made  it  to  re-live  its  life  under  the  eye  of 


HISTORY  CORRECTS  SPECULATION. 


255 


the  poet  and  thinker.  As  a necessary  result  to  interpret 
man  was  to  interpret  his  religion,  and  no  philosophy  of 
religion  was  possible  without  recognition  of  the  place  and 
meaning  of  the  supreme  religious  Person  of  history.  Hence 
the  Transcendentalisms  that  rose  out  of  two  such  apparently 
opposed,  yet  really  convergent,  streams  as  the  criticism  of  Kant 
and  the  humanism  of  Herder,  especially  as  modified  by  the 
Romanticists,  could  not  but  attempt  the  speculative  construc- 
tion both  of  Christianity  and  Christ.  But  the  Christ  it 
laboured  to  construe  was  the  Christ  of  doctrine  and-  tradi- 
tion ; His  name  to  it  was  but  a symbol,  a formula,  which 
had  simply  to  be  accepted  and  translated  into  the  language 
of  the  school  in  order  to  be  made  the  very  crown  and  apex 
of  the  philosophy.  Strauss  took  the  matter  in  full  earnest, 
and,  that  the  school  might  be  free  to  deal  with  the  formula 
as  it  listed,  he  undertook  to  do  away  with  the  historical 
Person,  dissolving  Him  into  a mythical  creation,  which  only 
the  more  therefore  embodied  the  Idea.  He  was  thus  but  a 
speculative  thinker  disguised  as  an  historian  ; he  had  used 
his  philosophy  to  get  rid  of  the  historical  reality  and  to  trans- 
late it  as  a religious  idea  into  the  terms  of  the  transcen- 
dental notion.  His  criticism  ought  never  to  be  taken  as  a 
serious  performance  ; its  real  significance  was  not  in  what 
it  did,  but  in  what  it  caused  to  be  done.  It  followed  a 
twofold  method  : as  literary  it  was  a hostile  analysis  of. cur- 
rent views  as  to  the  Gospels  ; as  historical  it  was  a dissolu- 
tion of  the  history  into  myths.  But  in  neither  respect  was 
it  independent  ; in  both  it  was  too  much  governed  by  a priori 
considerations  to  have  any  scientific  worth  whatever.  Yet 
its  very  failure  was  its  greatest  service  to  science  ; the  noise 
it  had  made  was  a direct  invitation  to  architectonic  mi  ds 
of  every  type  to  arise  and  build. 

This  call  was  equally  heard  on  two  sides — the  side  of  faith 
and  of  science.  They  both  for  different  reasons  lay  under 
the  same  necessity — the  moral  and  intellectual  compulsion  to 


256 


RECONJ^TRUCTION  BY  CRITICISM. 


seek  and,  if  possible,  discover  the  historical  truth.  They 
started  from  very  different  principles,  pursued  somewhat  dif- 
ferent methods  with  altogether  different  hopes  ; but  the  quest 
of  each  was  the  same — the  real  history  of  Christ  with  all  that 
pertained  to  His  person,  words,  and  work.  On  the  one  side, 
the  men  of  faith  suddenly  found  themselves  confronted  with 
the  most  awful  of  all  possible  losses — the  going  out,  in  the 
interests  of  the  Absolute  Idea,  of  the  one  Divine  Person  in 
history.  If  all  the  institutions  that  had  grown  round  Him, 
all  the  doctrines  that  had  been  formulated  concerning  Him, 
all  the  modes  of  doing  Him  honour  and  rendering  Him  ser- 
vice, were  to  live  while  He  Himself  were  to  die  or  be  as  one 
who  had  never  lived  the  Divine  life  save  in  the  imaginations 
of  men,  then  the  life  in  all  these  institutions,  doctrines,  and 
forms  of  homage  would  be  but  a deeper  death,  with  His 
going  all  that  invested  them  with  power  and  meaning  would 
also  go.  Hence  men  who  so  felt  were  bound  to  rise  and 
attempt  to  build  the  altar  which  had  been  destroyed  ; but 
with  true  instinct  they  saw  that,  while  destruction  had  come 
by  the  path  of  speculation,  reconstruction  must  come  by 
the  way  of  historical  inquiry  and  literary  criticism.  On  the 
other  side,  the  men  of  science  were  equally  clear  as  to  their 
duty.  Strauss  had  solved  no  problem,  had  instead  raised  a 
multitude,  had  made  the  most  remarkable  moment  and  the 
greatest  event  in  history  less  intelligible  than  ever  they  had 
been  before.  It  was,  therefore,  necessary  by  new  methods, 
and  from  fresh  points  of  view,  to  begin  the  work  of  research 
and  discovery.  In  a constructive  and  positive  regard  the  latter 
tendency  was  more  important  than  the  former  ; the  Tubingen 
School  contributed,  directly  or  indirectly,  more  to  the  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  primitive  history,  and  to  the  new  sense  in 
its  reality,  than  did  the  men  they  were  accustomed  to  de- 
scribe and  to  despise  as  apologists.  The  claim  to  be  free 
from  assumptions  and  partialities  is  made  by  almost  all 
schools,  but  is  true  of  few,  if  of  any,  and  certainly  of  no 


THE  NEW  CHRISTOLOGIES. 


257 


modern  school  is  it  so  little  true  as  of  Tubingen.  Yet  in 
spite  of  its  assumptions  it  accomplished  work  that  has  made 
all  Christendom  its  debtor. 

But  before  we  touch  it  something  must  be  said  as  to  other 
tendencies  in  theology  and  historical  criticism.  The  period 
was  one  of  remarkable  activity  in  Christology.  The  men 
who  had  received  their  intellectual  impulse  from  Hegel  and 
Schleiermacher  did  not  cease  to  think  because  Strauss  had 
written,  rather  their  speculative  energy  was  absorbed  by  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  and  their  critical  by  the  history  of 
Christianity  and  its  sources.  The  tendency  was  common,  the 
subject  absorbed  men  of  all  schools  and  parties,  so  much  so  that 
this  century  has  earned  the  right  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the 
great  periods  of  constructive  Christology.  Of  course,  this  has 
always  been  a great  Lutheran  doctrine,^  so  discussed  as  to 
involve  the  question  not  only  of  the  relation  of  the  Divine  and 
human  natures  in  Christ,  but  of  God  to  nature  and  to  man. 
It  was  the  Lutheran  cominunicatio  idiomatum  that  made 
Schelling  and  Hegel,  as  well  as  Schleiermacher,  possible.  If 
the  Divine  attributes  could  be  so  communicated  to  the 
humanity  that  it  could,  without  ceasing  to  be  human,  become, 
as  it  were.  Divine,  then  certainly  a basis  was  laid  for  a 
philosophy  which  affirmed  the  identity  of  the  natures,  and 
translated  the  individual  or  singular  into  a collective  sonship. 
If,  too,  the  consciousness  of  God  could  be  so  communicated  to 
Christ  and  be  so  possessed  by  Him  that  it  could  be  described  as 
absolute,  then  the  communicated  was  the  communicable,  what 
He  had  received  He  had  only  to  transmit,  and  it  became  the 
consciousness  of  His  society,  which,  by  possessing,  as  it  were. 
His  immanent  presence,  became  articulated  into  Him.  And 
so,  as  Christological  doctrine  had  been  done  into  the  philoso- 
phies, it  was  but  natural  that  the  philosophies  should  be  done 
back  into  Christological  doctrine  again,  with  types  corre- 
sponding to  the  philosophies  that  had  given  the  impulse.  The 

^ Cf.  supra^  pp.  160,  161. 

17 


258  THE  PHILOSOPHIES  DONE  INTO  THEOLOGIES. 


result  was  the  emergence  of  three  schools,  though  each  had 
within  it  many  subordinate  varieties  : one  started  from  the 
Hegelian  idea,  and,  emphasizing  the  identity  of  the  human 
with  the  Divine,  endeavoured  to  relieve  the  humanity  from  the 
restraints  and  attributes  of  finitude  ; the  second,  starting  from 
the  same  idea,  but  emphasizing  the  identity  of  the  Divine 
with  the  human,  endeavoured  by  a theory  of  kenosis  to 
impose  certain  of  the  categories  of  finitude  upon  the  Deity  ; 
the  third,  by  emphasizing  the  ethical  elements  in  God  and 
man,  found  in  a new  society  or  humanity,  possessed  of 
Divine  life,  evidence  that  an  absolute  miracle,  a creative  and 
therefore  Divine  personality,  had  appeared  in  a human  form 
and  performed  what  corresponded  to  His  personality,  an 
absolute  miracle — viz.,  created  the  society  that,  as  it  were, 
perpetuated  both  His  being  and  His  activities.  The  first 
of  these  tendencies  used  more  or  less  the  categories  of 
Hegel ; the  second  forced  them  into  a Biblical  and  confes- 
sional formula  ; the  third  blended  the  principles  of  Schelling 
and  Schleiermacher  with  the  method  of  Hegel.  We  may 
term  these  respectively  the  philosophical,  the  kenotic,  and 
the  historical  Christologies,  but  to  attempt  to  deal  with  any 
in  detail  would  carry  us  far  beyond  our  present  limits.  It 
is  enough  for  our  purpose  to  indicate  their  significance.  They 
showed  (i)  that  in  positive  theology  the  Incarnation  had 
for  all  parties  become  the  centre  of  gravity  ; (2)  that  it  could 
not  be  construed  without  reference  both  to  the  historical 
Person  and  the  faith  in  Him  and  the  life  from  Him  which 
had  together  persisted  in  His  society ; (3)  that  critical 
activity  as  to  the  sources  had  only  stimulated  speculative 
activity  as  to  the  Person ; and  (4)  that,  apart  from  the 
historical  reality  of  the  Person  and  the  veracity  of  the 
sources,  every  attempt  at  dogmatic  construction  was  but  a 
byplay  in  a philosophical  movement,  without  the  religious 
value  and  function  that  could  alone  justify  its  being  in  a 
living  theology. 


BAUR  NO  SECOND  STRAUSS. 


259 


§ II. — Ferdinand  Christian  Baur. 

We  turn  now  to  the  Tubingen  School,  that  we  may  under- 
stand how  it  contributed  towards  the  solution  of  the  questions 
raised,  but  left  undiscussed  and  unanswered,  by  Strauss.  It 
was  the  creation  of  a man,  whose  death  was  also  its  dissolu- 
tion, yet  it  had  distinguished  disciples,  and  certain  of  these  so 
important  as  to  be  in  name  and  achievement  hardly  inferior 
to  the  master.  It  was  a progressive  school,  learned  from 
experience  and  experiment,  had  a mind  that  was  educated  by 
research  and  modified  by  discovery.  Its  founder,  Ferdinand 
Christian  Baur,  was  in  various  ways  most  unlike  Strauss.  He 
did  not  reach  his  position,  as  it  were,  at  a bound,  by  the 
sudden  spring  of  a daring  and  aggressive  intellect,  but  slowly, 
progressively,  by  the  path  now  of  speculation,  now  of  historical 
investigation,  now  of  critical  inquiry,  and  each  new  position 
he  reached  supplemented  or  qualified  his  earlier  inferences. 
And  so  the  changes  that  came  to  him  were  logical,  the  result 
of  broadening  knowledge  or  deepening  insight.  His  mental 
history  was  not,  like  that  of  Strauss,  a series  of  impulsive 
revolutions,  changes  of  mind  due  more  often  to  revulsions  of 
feeling  than  to  the  slow  process  of  conviction  or  conversion, 
but  was  a consistent  growth,  governed  throughout  by  rare 
integrity  of  intellect.  He  and  his  criticism  are  therefore  much 
more  significant,  though  the  two  were  often  placed  in  the 
inverse  relation  ; he  was  Strauss’  schoolmaster  at  Blaubeuren, 
his  professor  at  Tubingen,  and  it  used  to  be  said  that  the 
master  became  the  scholar’s  pupil.  This  had  in  it  enough 
of  the  appearance  of  truth  to  pass  with  the  thoughtless  for 
true.  Meanwhile  we  must  know  something  of  the  man  that 
we  may  understand  his  school. 

Baur  was  born  in  1792,  was  the  son  of  a German  pastor, 
reared  in  severe  simplicity  and  obedience,  nursed  in  the 
peculiar  mystic  yet  evangelical  piety  of  Swabia.  He  was 
educated  at  Blaubeuren  and  Tubingen,  while  the  idealisms  of 


26o 


THE  HISTORY  OF  HIS  MIND 


Fichte  and  Schelling  were  in  the  ascendant.  He  qualified 
himself  for  the  mastery  of  the  moderns  by  a deep  and 
sympathetic  study  of  Plato,  and  found  the  Academy  the  best 
propaedeutic  for  theology.  He  was  an  ideal  student,  had  no 
enjoyment  outside  his  study.  One  of  his  most  brilliant  pupils, 
Friedrich  Vischer,  has  described  him  as  to  the  very  heart 
modern  in  spirit  and  work,  but  ancient  in  worth,  near  kinsman 
to  the  reformers,  a patriarch  while  a modern,  heroic  in  his 
industry  and  patient  love  of  truth,  great,  simple,  good,  with  a 
voice  whose  very  tones  spoke  of  inmost  sincerity  and  simplicity. 
His  influence  was  immense,  at  once  stimulating  and  unsettling. 
On  these  points  there  is  emphatic  testimony.  An  extraor- 
dinary proportion  of  his  pupils  became  either  distinguished  or 
well-known  men.  Of  the  nine  who  in  Strauss’s  time  were  the 
elite  of  the  forty  seminarists,  all,  with  one  exception,  after  a 
longer  or  shorter  trial  of  the  Church,  sought  and  found  their 
way  out  of  it  into  teaching  or  literature^ — a curious  prophecy 
of  the  fate  which  in  the  later  days  of  its  founder  was  to  befall 
the  new  Tubingen  School. 

The  history  of  his  mind  explains  the  genesis  of  his  school. 
He  began  his  theological  studies  penetrated  with  the  lofty 
visions  and  a priori  constructions  of  idealistic  thought. 
Schleiermacher  was  then  dominant  in  theology,  and  his 
“ Glaubenslehre  ” helped  Baur  out  of  the  old  Tubingen 
scholasticism  into  a system  which  allowed  his  critical  faculty 
freer  play.  He  was  one  of  the  men  in  whom  many  tendencies 
meet,  and  whose  strongly  assimilative  yet  independent  minds 
unify  the  conflicting  currents  into  a single  and  homogeneous 
stream.  While  Strauss  was  his  pupil,  Baur  published  in 
1824  a work  on  symbolism  and  mythology.^  It  is  an  attempt 
to  discuss  and  exhibit,  as  to  matter  and  form,  the  so-called 

1 Strauss,  “Christian  Marklin,”  p.  24. 

2 “ Symbolik  und  Mythologie,  oder  die  Natur-religion  des  Alterthums  ” 
(Stuttgart,  1824-25).  The  work  was  in  three  volumes,  but  in  two  parts,  a 
general  and  a special.  The  first  was  taken  up  with  questions  as  to 


AND  THE  GENIUS  OF  HIS  SCHOOL. 


261 

heathen  religions.  Its  principles  are  those  of  the  idealistic 
philosophy  as  qualified  by  Schleiermacher,  its  tools  those  of 
Creuzer.  A symbol  is  the  representation  of  an  idea  through 
a simple  picture  or  image  given  in  space  ; a myth  the  figura- 
tive representation  of  an  idea  through  an  act,  an  event  in 
time.  The  form  of  the  symbol  is  nature  ; of  the  myth, 
history  and  the  persons  who  act  in  it.  The  essential  element 
in  both  is  the  idea  represented,  which  in  the  race  as  in  the 
individual  is  perceived  in  a concrete  before  it  can  be  con- 
ceived in  an  abstract  form.  Symbol  and  myth  are  necessary 
as  forms  to  religion.  It  is  given  immediately  through  the 
spiritual  nature  of  man,  but  finds  its  positive  realization 
in  history.  History  is  a revelation  of  the  Godhead,  mytho- 
logy one  of  its  elements  or  members.  Monotheism  is  the 
highest  stage  in  the  evolution  of  religion  ; Christianity  the 
highest  point  Monotheism  has  reached — an  ethical  Idealism, 
which,  while  revealed  in  historical  acts  and  events,  is  yet  to 
be  construed  as  a matter  of  innermost  self-consciousness. 

But  he  did  not  long  remain  in  the  school  of  Schleiermacher  ; 
he  was  soon  caught  in  the  fine  yet  strong  network  of  the 
Hegelian  dialectic,^  and  it  became  to  him  at  once  a philosophy 
of  history  and  of  religion  and  an  historical  method.  In  har- 
mony with  it  he  construed  history  as  the  development  and 

mythology  and  history,  the  second  with  an  analysis  of  the  main  elements 
and  ideas  of  the  religion.  The  work  was  written  before  Baur  had  been 
called  to  Tubingen. 

^ The  date  of  his  transition  to  Hegel  can  be  fixed  with  tolerable  pre- 
cision. His  reply  to  Moehler’s  “Symbolik”  (“  Der  Gegensatz  desKatholi- 
cismus  und  Protestantismus  ”)  appeared  first  in  1833  (second  edition  1836), 
and  exhibits  in  curious  but  instructive  combination  Schleiermacher’s  con- 
sciousness of  dependence  and  Hegel’s  doctrine  of  the  Absolute.  This 
is  a work  of  remarkable  breadth  and  power.  Moehler’s  “Symbolik”  has 
been  translated,  yet  Baur’s  reply,  which  has  never  been  so  honoured,  is  its 
superior  in  everything  but  style.  The  two  books  have  this  in  common  — 
both  are  eclectic.  Moehler  owed  almost  everything  distinctive  in  his  book 
to  the  German  Protestants  under  whom  he  had  studied.  His  theory  of 
tradition  and  the  Church  is  but  a modification  of  Schleiermacher,  his  theory 
of  the  Church  and  the  Incarnation  a modification  of  Schelling.  In  Baur’s 


262 


THE  HEGELIAN  DIALECTIC  APPLIED 


the  explication  of  the  Idea.  Thought  stood  where  God  or 
Providence  used  to  stand  ; instead  of  an  order  created  by  a 
personal  will  we  had  the  successions  and  relations  of  a dia- 
lectical movement.  Facts,  events,  persons,  were  but  bearers 
of  the  idea,  factors  in  its  unfolding  and  articulation.  Philo- 
sophy had  to  do  with  the  unity  or  subject  which  was  the 
cause  of  all  change ; history  had  to  do  with  the  forms,  indi- 
viduals, acts,  occurrences,  which  were  its  varied  vehicles  and 
ministers.  The  function  of  the  thinker  was  so  to  study 
history  as  to  discover  and  to  be  able  to  exhibit  the  unity  in 
the  multiplicity  of  its  manifestations.  The  manifold  of  nature 
existed  to  sense,  the  manifold  of  history  to  imagination  ; but 
thought,  reason,  was  bound  to  seek  under  all  its  complex  mani- 
foldness the  organising  idea,  the  causal  subject,  the  rational 
unity.  As  a result  Christianity  could  not  be  conceived  as  an 
accident ; it  represented  a necessary  stage  in  the  evolution  of 
thought ; it  was  so  built  into  the  order  of  things  that  it  could 
not  but  be.  To  study  its  phenomena  and  development  was 
not  to  study  a chaos  or  a succession  of  more  or  less  fortunate 
chances,  but  an  ordered  and  an  orderly  movement  of  mind.  But 
a further  and  more  important  result  was  this — its  phenomena 
could  not  be  interpreted  in  isolation,  but  only  as  an  organized 
and  organic  whole ; as  their  cause  was  one,  they,  too,  constituted 
a unity;  the  idea  was  explicated  only  when  it  was  realized  and 
known.  Thus  the  polity  of  the  Church  could  not  be  construed 
without  the  doctrine,  or  the  doctrine  and  polity  without 
the  worship,  or  the  doctrine,  polity,  and  worship  without  the 
literature,  or  the  literature  without  the  manners  and  customs, 

work  one  of  the  most  instructive  things  is  its  success  in  showing  how  easily 
the  absolute  sovereignty  of  Calvinism  can  be  translated  into  the  Hegelian 
Absolute,  and  how  simply  the  evangelical  principle,  that  good  works 
can  never  avail  before  God,  can  be  turned  into  the  philosophical  for- 
mula— the  human  creature  in  himself  is  nothing  before  God.  Whatever 
attributes  to  man  independence  of  God  or  reality  of  being  before  Him, 
contradicts  the  principle  of  Protestantism. — “ Der  Gegensatz,  ’ p.  49 
(2nd  ed.). 


TO  HISTORY  AND  DOCTRINE. 


263 


or  all  these  together  without  the  men  in  and  through  whom 
they  had  lived  ; and  though  these  all  differed,  yet  all  were 
necessary  to  the  realization  of  the  idea,  and  the  idea  in  all 
was  the  same.  And  so,  as  a still  further  result,  the  most  vital 
element  in  religion  was  its  thought ; indeed,  thought  was  its 
very  essence,  the  one  thing  that  was  expressed  in  all  its  forms 
and  gave  unity  to  their  infinite  variety.  Indeed,  no  man  ever 
had  a deeper  or  truer  conception  than  Baur  of  the  relation  of 
dogma  to  the  Church  and  to  religion,  and  it  was  in  this  field 
that  he  did  his  really  valuable  and  permanent  work.  His  great 
monographs  on  the  history  of  dogmas,  on  the  Manichcan 
religious  system,  on  the  Christian  Gnosis,  on  the  Atonement, 
on  the  Trinity  and  Incarnation,  his  Handbook,  his  Lectures, 
and  his  chapters  on  dogma  in  his  Church  history,  are  all 
remarkable  for  their  solid  research,  patient  and  lucid  exposi- 
tion, penetrative  thought  and  criticism.  He  is  not  always  to 
be  trusted  (no  man  is)  ; his  philosophy  often  makes  him  wise 
above  what  is  written,  or  tempts  him  to  interpret  ancient 
doctrines  as  provisional  and  anticipatory  forms  of  modern 
principles,  and  to  lay  an  exaggerated  emphasis  on  the  action 
of  antitheses,  their  power,  by  contradicting,  to  develop  each 
other  till  comprehended  in  a higher  synthesis.  But  in 
extenuation  of  these  defects  much  could  be  said.  There  is 
so  much  of  Hegel  in  neo-Platonism,  and  consequently  in  the 
contemporary  Christianity,  that  it  would  have  been  astonish- 
ing if  a Hegelian  had  not  found  much  of  his  own  mind  in 
certain  ancient  dogmas.  Yet  the  very  reading  of  an  old 
doctrine  by  a new  mind  is  a condition  of  its  better  interpre- 
tation. 


§ III. — How  Baur  came  to  his  Problem. 

Baur  was  engaged  in  this  field  of  study  when  the  “ Leben 
Jesu  ” appeared,  and  he  remained  an  almost  silent  spectator 
of  the  controversy  it  caused.  That  work  had  had  for  him 


264 


THE  INCARNATION  NOT  HISTORICAL, 


nothing  new,^  as  he  had  watched  its  growth  and  discussed 
every  point  in  the  process  with  its  author.  This  sheds  light  on 
a significant  literary  coincidence.  The  “ Leben  Jesu  ” and  the 
most  suggestive  of  all  Baur’s  books  on  the  history  of  religious 
thought  appeared  in  the  same  year  (1835),  and  they  express  on 
the  fundamental  matter  of  the  speculative  Christology  views 
that,  while  almost  identical,  yet  exhibit  most  characteristic 
differences.^  “ All  that  Christ  is  as  God-man  He  is  only  in 
faith  and  through  faith  ” ; “ what  lies  behind  faith  as  historical 
reality  is  veiled  in  mystery.”  “ The  God-man  is  indeed  the 
object  of  faith,  but  not  its  necessary  presupposition  ; what 
faith  presupposes  is  not  Christ  as  God-man,  but  as  mere 
man,  an  empirical  human  being.”  The  judgment  of  faith  is 
therefore  a subjective  process,  though  it  finds  its  occasion  in 
an  historical  appearance.  In  order  to  be  justified,  faith  must 
become  knowledge  ; and  this  happens  not  through  any  outer 
history,  but  by  philosophy,  which  is  knowledge  of  the  Absolute 
Spirit,  God  as  the  Triune,  and  the  identity  of  man  with  God. 
The  knowledge  of  Christ  as  God-man  is  the  truth  as  to  the 
unity  of  the  Divine  and  human  natures.  “ Everything  which 
relates  to  the  appearance  and  life  of  Christ  has  its  truth  only 
therein,  that  in  Him  was  manifested  the  essence  and  life  of 
the  Spirit  ; but  what  the  Spirit  is  and  does  is  no  affair  of 
history.  For  faith,  therefore,  the  appearance  of  the  God-man, 
the  incarnation  of  God,  His  birth  in  the  flesh,  may  be  an 
historical  fact ; but  to  speculative  thought  the  incarnation  of 
God  is  no  single  event  which  once  happened,  but  an  eternal 

^ Baur,  “ Kirchengeschichte  des  Neunzehn.  Jahrhundts.,”  p.  397. 

2 Cf.  “ Die  Christliche  Gnosis,”  pp.  707-721,  with  the  conclusory  disserta- 
tion of  the  “ Leben.”  On  the  question  of  priority  this  ought  to  be  stated : the 
second  volume  of  the  “ Leben,”  which  contains  the  speculative  Christology, 
did  not  appear  till  1836,  while  “Die  Christliche  Gnosis  ” had  appeared  the 
year  before.  On  the  connection  between  the  speculative  question  and  the 
method  of  historical  proof,  see  Ritschl  in  the  “ Jahrb.  f.  dents.  TheoL,” 
vol.  vi.,  pp.  433  ff.  He  there  replies  to  an  article  by  Zeller  on  the  Tubingen 
School  which  had  appeared  in  Von  Sybel’s  “Hist.  Zeitschrift,”  but  has 
since  been  published  in  the  first  volume  of  the  “ Vortrage.” 


BUT  ETERNAL  AND  UNIVERSAL. 


265 


determination  of  the  essence  of  God,  by  virtue  of  which  God 
only  in  so  far  becomes  man  in  time  (in  every  individual  man) 
as  He  is  man  from  eternity.  The  finitude  and  humiliation 
and  passion  which  Christ  as  God-man  endured  God  at  every 
moment  suffers  as  man.  The  atonement  mauj  by  Christ  is 
no  temporal  performed  act,  but  God  reconciling  Himself  with 
Himself  eternally  ; and  the  resurrection  and  exaltation  of 
Christ  is  nothing  else  than  the  eternal  return  of  the  Spirit  to 
Himself  and  to  His  truth.  Christ  as  man,  as  God-man,  is  man 
in  His  universality ; not  a single  individual,  but  a universal 
individual.” 

As  regards  their  speculative  Christology,  Baur  and  Strauss 
were  near  enough  to  be  described  as  agreed,  but  in  the 
application  to  the  personal  Christ  the  significant  differences 
emerged,  Strauss  too  utterly  dissolved  His  historical 
reality  to  leave  Him  any  function,  but  Baur  allowed  Him 
too  important  a function  to  be  able  to  lose  historical 
reality.  He  held  that  it  was  in  Christ  that  the  truth  as  to 
the  unity  of  the  Divine  and  human  natures  first  attained 
concrete  and  self-conscious  being,  and  was  by  Him  expressed 
and  taught  as  truth.  Here  was  a double  reality  : in  Him 
man  achieved  the  consciousness  of  the  truth  and  from  Him 
received  it.  In  respect  of  the  form  of  knowledge,  and  in  no 
other,  did  the  philosopher  who  knew  the  absolute  stand  above 
Christ.  So  to  speak  of  Him  was  to  postulate  a fulness  and 
certainty  of  historical  knowledge  much  beyond  what  Strauss 
could  allow.  In  other  words,  the  problem  to  Strauss  had 
been  negative,  but  to  Baur  it  was  positive.  The  former  had 
been  only  anxious  to  dissolve  the  sacred  history  and  turn  it 
into  a sensuous  form  of  the  absolute  philosophy  ; but  the  latter 
was  minded  to  discover  what  the  history  had  really  been,  and 
how  out  of  it  so  stupendous  a fact  as  Christianity  had  grown. 
Thence  came  Baur’s  distinctive  problem  : how,  while  agreeing 
with  the  philosophical  construction  of  Strauss,  to  escape  the 
negative  results  of  the  mythical  theory  and  discover  the  actual 


266 


FROM  THE  HISTORY  OF  DOGMA 


and  positive  process  by  which  Christianity  rose  and  developed 
on  the  held  of  history.  He  saw  that  Strauss  had  committed  a 
double  blunder — one  in  literary,  another  in  historical,  criticism  : 
in  literary,  because  he  had  attempted  a criticism  of  the 
Gospel  history  without  any  criticism  of  the  Gospels  them- 
selves ; in  historical,  because  he  had  neglected  the  one  hxed 
and  certain  point  from  which  the  history  could  be  so  ap- 
proached as  to  be  surely  and  scientihcally  construed.  To  do 
these  two  things  was  the  function  and  end  of  the  Tubingen 
criticism. 

In  the  development  of  Baur’s  mind,  the  order  in  which 
he  came  to  the  problem  was  the  reverse  of  that  above 
stated — 2>.,  the  historical  preceded  the  literary.  These, 
indeed,  he  so  fused  as  to  make  the  distinction  somewhat 
unreal.  He  so  construed  history  through  literature,  and 
literature  in  history,  that  one  may  say  all  his  literary  criticism 
was  historical,  and  all  his  historical  criticism  literary.  His 
general  canon  may  be  stated  thus : Find  out  the  oldest 
authentic  literature,  through  it  discover  the  strict  con- 
temporary history,  then  use  the  knowledge  thus  gained  to 
determine  the  earlier  history  and  the  value  of  its  less  strictly 
authentic  literary  monuments.  In  obedience  to  this  canon,  he 
approached  the  study  of  the  Gospels  from  positions  obtained 
through  the  study  of  the  Apostolic  Epistles  and  history. 
This  point  of  approach  is  noteworthy,  and  explains  much 
in  Baur’s  criticism  otherwise  unintelligible.  It  grew  out  of 
his  studies  as  an  historian  of  dogmas  which  had  carried 
him  back  into  the  post-Apostolic  and  Apostolic  times.  The 
very  subjects  he  had  chosen  forced  him  to  face  the  differences 
within  Christianity,  and  to  inquire  whence  had  they  come, 
what  were  their  causes,  affinities,  distribution.  As  a result 
he  came  to  conceive  the  early  Church  as  a by  no  means 
homogeneous  body,  but  one  in  which  there  were  many  minds, 
shaped  by  many  influences,  using  ideas  and  terms,  following 
customs  and  forming  institutions  that  had  often  a long  prior 


TO  THE  HISTORY  OF  LITERATURE. 


267 


history.  From  the  controversies  of  the  post-Apostolic  he 
approached  the  Apostolic  age,  seeking  in  the  one  the  germs 
of  the  differences  he  had  found  in  the  other.  He  had,  indeed, 
as  early  as  1831,  in  an  essay  on  “The  Party  of  Christ  in  the 
Church  at  Corinth,”  argued  to  the  existence  of  antagonisms 
in  the  Apostolic  Church  ; but  the  full  extent  and  meaning 
of  the  differences  dawned  on  him  but  slowly.  In  his  work 
on  “The  Pastoral  Epistles,”  published  in  1835,  he,  full  of 
his  studies  on  Gnosticism,  argued  to  their  late  date,  indeed 
to  their  origin  in  the  second  century,  because  they  exhibit 
so  many  and  so  distinct  traces  of  the  ideas,  the  parties,  and 
the  policies  of  the  Gnostic  period. 

But  it  was  only  after  he  had  finished  the  cycle  of  his 
great  monographs  in  the  history  of  dogma  that  he  applied 
himself  to  the  main  problem.  His  work  on  “ Paul,”  pub- 
lished in  1845,  two  years  after  his  “History  of  the  Trinity,” 
exhibits  with  consummate  critical  skill  the  conclusions  he 
had  reached.  It  made  an  era  in  New  Testament  criticism. 
The  significant  points  in  it  were  two — one  critical  and  one 
historical.  The  critical  was  : — in  Romans,  i and  2 Corin- 
thians, and  Galatians,  we  have  authentic  Apostolic  docu- 
ments, genuine  Epistles  of  Paul.  They  are  our  best 
authorities  on  every  question  touching  the  origin,  nature, 
and  principles  of  primitive  Christianity.  The  historical  posi- 
tion was  : — these  authentic  documents  reveal  antithet^es  of 
thought,  a Petrine  and  a Pauline  party  in  the  Apostolic 
Church.  The  Petrine  was  the  primitive  Christian,  made  up 
of  men  who,  while  believing  in  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  did 
not  cease  to  be  Jews,  whose  Christianity  was  but  a narrow 
neo-Judaism.  The  Pauline  was  a reformed  and  Gentile 
Christianity,  which  aimed  at  universalizing  the  faith  in  Jesus 
by  freeing  it  from  the  Jewish  law  and  traditions.  The 
universalism  of  Christianity,  and  therefore  its  historical  im- 
portance and  achievements,  are  thus  really  the  work  of  the 
Apostle  Paul.  His  work  he  accomplished  not  with  the 


268 


THE  PAULINE  AND  PETRINE  ANTITHESES. 


approval  and  consent,  but  against  the  will  and  in  spite  of 
the  efforts  and  oppositions,  of  the  older  Apostles,  and  espe- 
cially of  their  more  inveterate  adherents  who  claimed  to  be 
the  party  of  Christ.  The  antithesis  was  absolute,  emerged 
at  every  point.  It  was  personal,  a conflict  as  to  apostleship — 
whether  Paul’s  was  or  was  not  as  authoritative  and  Divine 
in  its  origin  as  that  of  Peter  or  James  or  John  ; religious, 
whether  the  Gentiles  were  or  were  not  as  free  to  Christ  as  the 
Jews  ; historical,  whether  the  old  dispensation  had  or  had  not 
been  repealed.  In  it  the  very  essence  and  whole  future  of 
Christianity  was  involved  ; by  it  the  whole  series  of  Pauline 
antitheses  was  explained — grace  and  law,  faith  and  works, 
flesh  and  spirit,  letter  and  spirit,  old  and  new  covenant,  law 
and  promise,  the  old  man  and  the  new,  righteousness  by  faith 
or  of  law,  were  but  forms  under  which  this  conflict  as  to 
the  meaning  and  mission  of  the  Gospel  proceeded.  The 
thing  might  seem  strange,  but  there  it  stood  written  on  the 
broad  face  of  the  documents,  yet  illustrated  in  their  obscurest 
references  and  minutest  details.  The  men  who  had  been 
with  Jesus — chosen,  called,  trained,  authorized,  and  sent  out 
by  Him — did  not  understand  Him, — they  knew  Christ  only 
after  the  flesh  ; but  the  man  who  had  been  born  out  of 
due  time,  the  last  of  the  Apostles,  had,  not  by  the  ordinary 
historical  way,  but  by  a sort  of  miraculous  divination,  by 
clear  and  logical  deduction  from  the  cross  and  death  of 
Christ,  rediscovered  the  universalism  and  the  freedom  that 
were  in  Him,  and  rescued  Christianity  from  relapsing  into 
Judaism.  Not  the  unity,  therefore,  but  the  differences  and 
antagonisms,  of  the  Apostolic  age  is  the  key  to  all  its 
problems,  the  point  on  which  the  constructive  historian 
must  stand  if  he  would  do  his  work. 

§ IV. — How  Baur  solved  his  Problem. 

From  the  position  thus  won  Baur  proceeded,  by  the  help 
of  the  Hegelian  philosophy  and  method,  to  interpret  primitive 


UNIVERSALISM  AND  PARTICULARISM. 


269 


Christianity,  or,  in  other  words,  explain  the  rise  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  This  history  exhibited,  as  it  were,  in 
operation  the  fundamental  law  of  the  philosophy,  was  the 
palmary  example  of  the  dialectical  movement  by  which  out  of 
difference  and  contradiction  unity  was  evolved.  There  was 
the  thesis  : — Particularism,  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  the  Messiah, 
His  religion  does  not  abolish  the  law,  is  only  a reformed  and 
ennobled  Judaism,  preached  by  Jews  to  Jews  ; then  came  the 
antithesis  : — Universalism,  Jesus  is  the  Christ  the  Saviour  of 
the  world,  known  by  faith,  preached  to  all  men  ; and,  finally, 
these  were  harmonized  in  the  synthesis  : — the  Catholic  Church, 
which  reconciled  the  discordant  elements  by  finding  place 
for  a new  law,  a new  priesthood,  and  a new  ceremonial,  but 
at  the  same  time  affirmed  the  Church  to  be  for  all,  one  and 
universal.  In  the  light  of  this  law  of  contradiction  and 
conciliation  primitive  Christianity  was  read  and  its  history 
reconstructed.  In  this  work  Baur  was  aided  by  a distin- 
guished band  of  scholars,  and  so  the  work  became  from  this 
point  not  simply  his,  but  his  school’s.  Together  they  used 
their  principle  and  method  to  explain  the  literature,  the 
doctrine,  and  the  polity  of  the  Apostolic  period,  yet  these 
three  so  formed  a unity  that  to  explain  one  was  to  explain  all. 

As  regards  the  Pauline  literature  the  application  was 
obvious : the  Epistles  that  showed  the  antitheses  in  their 
sharpest  form  were  the  oldest  and  most  authentic  ; the 
others  had  their  date  fixed  according  as  they  exhibited  the 
antitheses  as  clear,  or  as  modified,  or  as  in  process  of  being 
overcome.  But  for  us  the  most  interesting  thing  is  the  appli- 
cation of  this  law  to  the  criticism  of  the  Gospels.  Baur  did 
not  at  once  see  its  bearing  upon  these ; saw  it  only  after  he 
had  made  a special  study  of  John.  He  perceived  in  it  an 
ideal  purpose  ; the  history  was  dominated  by  an  idea,  written 
in  its  interest,  made  its  medium  or  expression.  This  was  a 
very  different  thing  from  saying  that  it  was  mythical.  Every- 
thing mythical  is  unhistorical,  but  not  everything  unhistorical 


2/0  TENDENCIES  ANTITHETICAL  AND  CONCILIATORY 

is  mythical.^  Many  things  that  seem  to  be  mythical  owe 
their  form  to  the  free  and  creative  mind  of  the  writer.  For 
this  mind  history  is  an  easy  and  elastic  medium  ; and  so  in 
the  criticism  of  the  Gospels  the  first  question  is  not,  What 
objective  reality  has  this  or  that  narrative  in  itself?  but  rather 
this,  How  does  the  narrative  stand  related  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  narrator,  by  whose  means  and  presumably  for 
whose  ends  it  has  become  for  us  an  object  of  historical 
knowledge  ? This  relation  of  the  narration  to  the  design  or 
mind  of  the  narrator  Baur  found  most  obvious  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  and  so  he  described  it  as  a history  with  a tendency — 
i.e.,  not  so  much  a history  as  a free  spiritual  creation  which 
made  facts  the  vehicles  of  the  writer’s  ideas.  The  Fourth 
was  in  every  respect  a contrast  to  the  Synoptic  or  historical 
Gospels  ; and  to  do  as  Strauss  had  done,  use  the  Synoptics 
to  discredit  John,  and  John  to  discredit  the  Synoptics,  was 
altogether  uncritical.  But  John,  thus  appraised  and  relegated 
to  a date  late  in  the  second  century,  because  representing 
the  very  last  stage  in  the  process  of  conciliation  and  com- 
prehension, made  the  theory  of  tendencies  applicable  to  the 
Synoptics.  The  application  was  made  in  harmony  with  Baur’s 
ideas  as  to  the  state  and  relation  of  parties  deduced  from 
the  recognized  Pauline  Epistles.  As  each  party  had  its  own 
notion  of  the  religion,  each  must  have  had  its  own  concep- 
tion of  the  Master  and  a history  which  embodied  it.  And 
so  the  three  Gospels  represented  the  three  parties — the  par- 
ticularist,  the  universalist,  and  the  mediatory — and  each  had 
its  tendency  thus  determined  ; it  so  selected  and  arranged 
and  handled  its  material  as  to  express  the  views  or  serve  the 
ends  of  its  party.  Matthew  was  the  oldest  Gospel,  the  de- 
pository of  the  Judaic  or  Petrine  tradition  ; Luke  was  Pauline 
in  its  aims,  made  its  selection  of  narratives  and  facts  in  the 
interests  of  universalism ; while  Mark  was  later  and  of  a 
neutral  character,  won  by  dropping  the  points  distinctive  of 
* “ Krit.  Untersch.  iiber  die  kanon.  Evang.,”  pp.  72,  73. 


MADE  CREATORS  OF  THE  CHURCH. 


271 


the  other  two.  And  so  the  Tubingen  was  the  very  antithesis 
of  the  Straussian  criticism,  and  consisted  not  in  emphasizing 
the  unconsciously  creative  mythicizing  imagination,  but  in  dis- 
covering the  conscious  design,  and  so  using  it  as  to  explain  the 
phenomena  of  the  Gospel.  The  literary  criticism  thus  became 
but  a form  of  the  historical ; the  conflicts  and  conciliation 
that  proceeded  in  the  Church  created  its  literature  ; its  ideal- 
ized histories  were  but  the  mirror  of  its  actual  life.  Baur 
blamed  Strauss  for  attempting  a criticism  of  the  Gospel 
history  without  a criticism  of  the  Gospels,  so  building  a 
structure  which  floated,  foundationless,  between  heaven  and 
earth.  Baur  himself  fell  into  the  opposite  extreme,  gave  a 
criticism  of  the  Gospels  without  any  correspondingly  ade- 
quate criticism  of  the  Gospel  histories — i.e.,  their  histories 
were  but  the  conflicts,  or  a theory  as  to  the  conflicts,  of 
the  Apostolic  age  carried  back  and  made  into  a life  of 
Christ. 

Baur’s  method  was  admirably  adapted  to  literary  criticism 
of  a given  sort.  He  studied  the  sources  in  the  light  of  his 
theory  ; searched  every  document  for  its  peculiarities  of  style, 
thought,  narration  ; and  then  strove  to  determine  the  time 
when  and  purpose  for  which  it  was  written.  The  conflict  and 
reconciliation  of  the  Petrine  and  Pauline  tendencies  accom- 
plished the  most  extraordinary  feats  in  the  realms  both  of 
Apostolic  and  post-Apostolic  literature.  Certain  works  were 
written  to  promote  the  first,  certain  others  to  promote  the 
second,  while  a third  class  arose  to  reconcile  the  two.  Every 
book,  every  fraction  of  a book,  had  thus  its  place  and  purpose 
in  the  historical  evolution  determined.  The  results  seemed  at 
first  most  satisfactory  and  permanent.  The  standpoint  of 
authentic  and  authoritative  history  won  in  the  Pauline  Epistles 
appeared  to  bring  certainty  where  there  had  been  conjecture, 
order  where  confusion  had  reigned.  The  spirit  and  policy 
that  united  so  many  conflicting  and  controversial  works  into  a 
single  and  sacred  canon  combined  the  opposed  parties  into 


2J2  THE  WATCHWORDS,  DISCIPLES,  AND 

one  Catholic  Church,  and  formulated  their  contrary  and  con- 
tradictory opinions  into  a body  of  Catholic  doctrine.  And  all 
was  done  in  obedience  to  the  most  scientific  law  the  philosophy 
of  history  had  been  able  to  formulate.  In  applying  this  law 
to  the  primitive  Church  and  its  literature  certain  formulae 
came  into  current  use,  and  pity  the  man  who  refused  to  use 
or  subscribe  them.  The  damnatory  clauses  of  the  Athanasian 
Creed  were  mild  in  comparison  with  the  judgment  he  had 
to  bear.  Petrinismus  and  Paulinismus,  Particularismus  and 
Universalismus,  Idea  and  Appearance,  Tendency,  Parteismus, 
Thesis,  Antithesis,  Synthesis,  were  the  keys  that  unlocked  all 
knowledge  ; to  be  unwilling  to  use  these  or  to  believe  in  the 
discoveries  made  by  their  light  was  to  be  adjudged  an  igno- 
ramus or  a charlatan,  or,  worst  of  all,  an  apologist,  which 
meant  little  else  than  a knave,  or  one  whose  only  science 
was  the  misuse  of  knowledge.  But  the  simplicity  and  ease 
of  the  method,  the  splendid  results  it  achieved,  the  happy 
yet  audacious  combinations  it  enabled  men  to  make,  gave  to 
the  men  who  used  it  a sense  of  power  and  of  new  discoveries, 
and  rallied  a brilliant  band  of  scholars  round  the  master. 
The  new  Tubingen  School  was  formed,  and  in  it — 

“ Et  pueri  nasum  rhinocerotis  habent.” 

Schwegler  anticipated  the  master  in  the  application  of  his 
theory  to  collective  history  or  the  complete  evolution  of 
primitive  Christianity,  and  in  a manner  which  almost  sur- 
passed him  in  critical  and  constructive  ingenuity,  tracing  the 
Church  from  its  germ  in  a Jewish  sect  which  believed  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  to  be  the  Messiah.  Zeller  brought  his  fine  historical 
sense  to  bear  on  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  ; Ritschl  wrote  the 
story  of  the  genesis  of  the  primitive  Catholic  Church  ; Kostlin 
busied  himself  with  the  theology  as  well  as  with  the  history 
and  criticism  of  the  Gospels.  But  the  limit  was  soon  reached, 
the  formulae  grew  emptier  the  longer  they  were  used,  the 
system  was  too  symmetrical,  and  though  the  explanation  was 


SPIRIT  OF  THE  TUBINGEN  SCHOOL. 


273 


SO  perfect  that  it  ought  to  have  been  true,  yet  somehow  it  did 
not  satisfy  even  those  who  had  so  laboriously  made  it  out  and 
built  it  up.  The  scholars  did  not  serve  the  school  with  their 
matured  powers.  Schwegler  found  in  the  history  of  Rome  a 
field  for  the  exercise  of  his  critical  faculty  ; Zeller,  to  the  great 
profit  of  modern,  became  the  historian  of  ancient,  philosophy  ; 
Ritschl  passed  from  the  left  in  theology  to  the  right  ; and 
Kostlin  went  over  to  aesthetics.  The  master  was  not,  indeed, 
left  alone  : distinguished  scholars  still  stood  by  him,  though 
more  and  more  asserting  by  divergences  their  independence. 
But  even  before  his  death,  in  December  i860,  his  school  had 
in  reality  ceased  to  be. 

§ V. — Where  the  Tubingen  Criticism  failed,  and  why. 

The  break-up  of  the  school  meant  that  its  work  was  accom- 
plished, its  lines  of  inquiry  and  possibilities  of  combination 
exhausted.  In  its  earlier  stages  it  had  achieved  great  things  ; 
in  its  later  it  had  failed  in  literary  criticism  through  one-sided 
exaggerations,  in  historical  through  its  inability  to  explain 
the  facts.  It  had  indeed  forced  New  Testament  criticism 
to  become  a science  ; extended  our  knowledge  of  the  early 
Church,  its  men,  parties,  beliefs,  purposes  ; had  given  life  and 
motion  to  the  once  dead  and  rigid  features  of  Apostolic  and 
post-Apostolic  literature  ; but  it  had  the  faults  inseparable  from 
a school  that,  while  formally  historical,  was  essentially  philo- 
sophical. It  failed  because  the  point  that  was  most  vital  for 
the  history  was  least  important  for  the  philosophy.  It  neither 
discovered  nor  cared  to  discover  the  Person  that  created  the 
processes  it  described.  Paul  was  more  important  than  Jesus. 
Impersonal  tendencies  were  greater  than  conscious  persons,  i 
Internal  divisions  and  jealousies  were  forces  mightier  and  more 
victorious  than  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity.  The  genesis  of 
a literature  was  made  in  a manner  conceivable,  but  not  the 
genesis  of  a religion,  with  its  ideas  and  truths  and  enthusiasms. 

18 


274  the  oversights  of  the  SCHOOL: 

The  tendency  had  demolished  the  mythical  theory.  What  was 
written  out  of  the  set  purpose  to  serve  a party  could  not  be 
a product  of  the  unconsciously  creative  phantasy.  The  con- 
scious invention  could  not  at  the  same  time  be  an  unconscious 
creation.  But  the  more  conscious  the  creative  process  became 
the  more  difficult  grew  the  theory,  for  it  the  more  distinctly 
involved  the  reality  and  the  veracity  of  the  persons  who 
conducted  the  process,  and  demanded  an  exhaustive  analysis 
of  the  materials  with  which  they  worked.  The  Tubingen 
criticism  had  this  paradoxical  character — it  was  at  once  most 
abstract  in  its  principles  and  method,  and  most  concrete  and 
particular  in  its  procedure  ; and  as  a consequence  what  its 
principles  and  method  determined  beforehand  its  critical  pro- 
cess was  made  to  prove.  That  process  was  one  of  internal 
criticism,  uncorrected  by  a sufficient  analysis  of  what  may  be 
termed  the  objective  or  external  conditions.  In  place  of  this 
stood  certain  philosophical  formulae,  and  these  were  fallacious  in 
the  very  degree  that  they  were  imposing.  Thus  Particularism 
was  identified  with  Christian  Judaism,  and  dealt  with  as  if 
it  were  something  uniform  and  homogeneous.  But  it  com- 
prehended many  varieties : Palestinian  ; Hellenistic ; men 
who  clung  to  the  ceremonialism  of  the  Synagogue,  but  dis- 
liked the  Temple  ; men  who  held  to  the  Temple  and  feared 
the  Synagogue ; men  who  were  of  Essenic,  of  Pharisaic,  or 
of  Sadducaic  sympathies  ; men  whose  tendencies  were  more 
universal  than  national.  Paulinism,  too,  was  not  so  dis- 
tinctly Gentile,  as  Baur  imagined  ; it  was  full  of  Judaic 
elements,  which  he  overlooked,  and,  as  a consequence, 
whose  meaning  he  did  not  see,  either  for  the  universalism 
he  attributed  to  Paul,  or  for  the  particularism  he  ascribed 
to  the  pillar  Apostles.  Then,  because  of  his  a priori  and 
internal  criticism,  he  failed  to  note  the  rise  and  operation  of 
new  elements  in  the  Church  of  the  second  century.  His 
evolutional  process  was  too  exclusive  ; thought  was  to  him 
what  the  Church  is  to  the  Catholic,  and  in  watching  or 


ITS  INCONSISTENCIES  AND  INADEQUACIES. 


275 


describing  its  evolution  he  forgot  to  study  the  conditions  that 
made  it  possible  or  necessary. 

We  must  confess,  then,  that  the  Tubingen  criticism  failed, 
almost  as  completely  as  the  Rationalism  and  Mythicism  it  dis- 
placed, to  bring  us  face  to  face  with  the  historical  realities, 
especially  the  living  Person  that  had  created  Christianity. 
This  failure  was  manifold.  Paul  was  conceived  as  the  man  in 
whom  the  Christian  principle  exists  in  its  purest  form,  yet, 
as  also  holding  that  the  absolute  significance  of  Christianity 
depends  on  the  person  of  Christ,  is  indeed  essentially  identical 
with  it.  But  does  this  sense  of  the  pre-eminence  and  absolute 
value  of  His  person  belong  to  the  consciousness  of  Christ 
Himself  or  only  to  the  mind  of  Paul  ? If  to  the  former,  then 
the  Person  must  be  a vaster  factor  of  change  than  Baur  ever 
allowed  Him  to  be  ; if  only  to  the  latter,  all  that  we  have  is 
the  peculiar  doctrine  of  a distinguished  man.  Then,  too,  if,  as 
Baur  argues  in  another  connection,^  it  is  the  ethical  in  the 
person  and  doctrine  of  Jesus  which  constitutes  His  signifi- 
cance, how  comes  it  that  the  highly  metaphysical  Paul  is  His 
truest  exponent,  while  the  intensely  ethical  James  is  dismissed 
as  a typical  Ebionite  ? Then  his  theory  made  the  rival  parties 
look  real  and  consistent  enough  while  conceived  simply  in 
relation  to  each  other,  but  they  became  less  real  and  consis- 
tent when  conceived  in  historical  relation  to  Jesus.  How  did 
it  happen  that  the  Petrine  party,  who  had  known  Him  and 
were  the  depositaries  of  the  pure  original  tradition,  retained  so 
little  of  His  spirit  and  teaching,  while  the  Pauline,  who  had 
never  seen  Him,  retained  and  evolved  so  much  ? How  was  it 
that  two  so  dissimilar  streams  flowed  from  the  same  source  ? 
— that  Peter  so  missed  and  Paul  so  discovered  the  import  of 
Christ? — that  His  person  and  death  meant  so  much  to  the  one, 
so  little  to  the  other,  their  ideal  thus  contradicting,  as  it  were, 
their  actual  relations  ? By  what  title  could  principles  so 
antagonistic  as  legal  particularism  and  evangelical  universalism 
* “Die  Tiibinger  Schule,”  pp.  30  ff. 


276  THEORY  DEFICIENT  IN  HISTORICAL  VERACITY. 

both  claim  to  be  Christian  ? and  how  could  qualities  that 
excluded  each  other  be  akin  in  origin  and  united  in  end? 
But  these,  though  radical,  were  not  the  only  failures  on  the 
historical  side.  The  Church,  as  Baur  conceived  it,  had  in  its 
first  age  well-known  men,  but  almost  no  literature  ; in  its 
second  a great  literature,  but  almost  no  known  man.  How 
comes  it  that  the  jealous-minded  men  of  the  first  age,  who 
wrote  so  little,  are  to  us  distinct  and  familiar  persons,  while 
the  catholic-minded  men  of  the  second  age,  who  did  and 
wrote  so  much,  are  shadowy  and  nameless?  How  has  an 
illiterate  age  been  so  full  of  historical  personalities,  while  a 
most  literate  age  has  hardly  one  ? By  what  chance  have  not 
only  the  Socrates,  but  the  Sophists,  in  this  case  become  well- 
defined  characters,  living  in  the  full  light  of  history,  while 
Plato  and  the  Platonic  circle  have  faded  into  nebulous  name- 
less forms  ? A theory  that  involves  violent  anomalies  can 
hardly  claim  historical  veracity.  Baur’s  had  enough  of  the 
first  to  cancel  its  claim  to  the  second.  But  the  failure  of  the 
Tubingen  School  was  far  from  absolute,  was  indeed  in  some 
essential  respects  equal  to  the  most  splendid  success.  Their 
method  and  many  of  their  results  remain  a precious  and 
inalienable  inheritance,  which  every  explorer  on  the  same  field 
must  possess  before  he  can  hope  to  succeed. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  NEWER  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM  AND  THE 
HISTORICAL  CHRIST. 

WHAT,  then,  was  the  precise  result  of  the  Tubingen 
criticism  ? Simply  this — it  had  made  a more 
radical,  and  therefore  a more  historical,  criticism  an  im- 
perious necessity,  and  had  defined  as  its  final  yet  primary 
problem  the  discovery  of  the  historical  Christ.  Till  He  was 
known,  no  single  step  in  the  scientific  and  constructive 
interpretation  of  primitive  Christianity  could  be  taken.  The 
very  emphasis  that  had  been  laid  on  the  differences  in  the 
Apostolic  circle  compelled  an  appeal  to  the  source  in  which 
they  were  implied.  Hence  the  inquiry  into  Paulinism, 
which  had  been,  as  it  were,  the  peculiar  quest  of  Tubingen, 
was  superseded  by  one  more  fundamental  and  much  more 
complex.  This  was  an  inquiry  that  from  its  very  character 
could  not  be  conducted  by  the  sole  light  of  philosophical 
principles  and  the  use  of  internal  evidences  as  their  special 
formulae,  a sort  of  new  dialectic  clothed  in  a peculiar 
technical  terminology  of  its  own,  but  must  proceed  in  the 
spirit  and  method  proper  to  sober  yet  constructive  his- 
torical science.  All  that  can  be  done  here  is  to  sketch  its 
main  lines  and  results,  but  not  till  we  have  indicated  the 
energy  with  which  all  schools  of  thought  now  turned  to 
the  problem  Tubingen  had  so  carefully  masked,  yet  had 
made  so  inevitable. 


278  CRITICISM  TURNS  FROM  PAUL  TO  CHRIST. 


§ L— Through  Criticism  to  History. 

The  years  that  have  passed  since  the  death  of  Baur  in  i860 
may  be  described  as  the  period  of  the  criticism  of  the  Gospels 
and  their  history.  The  work  in  this  field  has  been  at  once 
fruitful  and  immense.  It  will  be  enough,  through  a few 
typical  books  and  names,  to  indicate  its  scope  and  variety. 
In  1859  Ewald  described  the  Tubingen  “wisdom”  as  a “dis- 
ordered dream,”  ^ and  he  exhibited  Christ  as  the  end  of  the 
ancient  and  the  beginning  of  the  modern  world,  the  alone 
true  Messiah,  the  eternal  King  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  which 
He  alone  founded  ; the  Son  of  God,  as  no  other  had  been 
in  our  mortal  flesh  and  fleeting  time  ; the  purest  reflection 
and  most  glorious  image  of  the  Eternal  Himself.^  It  is 
characteristic  that,  in  the  face  of  all  the  denials  of  the 
Tubingen  men,  he  holds  that  the  Johannean  authorship  of 
the  Eourth  Gospel  is  “ entirely  certain,”  a certainty  he  had 
always  maintained,  and  of  late  again  proved  ; and  he  loses 
himself  in  wonder  when  he  thinks  how  soon  the  most 
marvellous  of  histories  had  found  so  marvellous  an  historian.* 
In  1863  what  has  been  termed  “one  of  the  events  of  the 
century”  occurred.  Renan’s  “Vie  de  Jesus”  appeared.  Its 
faults  were  flagrant,  as  were  all  its  qualities  ; it  was  in- 
adequate, was  perfunctory  in  its  literary  criticism,  violent 
and  subjective  in  its  historical,  selecting  and  grouping  its 
material  in  obedience  to  an  aesthetic  faculty  that  had  more 
appreciation  of  the  picturesque  than  of  the  real.  For  the 
rest  it  was  unctuous,  without  ethical  sense  or  moral  dis- 
cernment, steeped  in  false  sentiment,  extravagant  in  its 
inverted  pietism,  offensive  in  its  rapturous  eulogies  of  One  it 
could  still  represent  as  in  the  supreme  moments  of  His  life 
stooping  to  imposture.  Indeed,  it  has  been  but  too  accu- 
rately described  as  the  most  sacred  of  all  histories  done  into 

^ “ Gesch.  des  Volkes  Israel,”  vol.  vii.,  p.  xix. 

* Ibid.,  vol.  V.,  pp.  496  ff. 

® Ibid.,  vol.  V.,  p.  121  ; vol.  vii.,  pp.  213  ff. 


CRITICS  : FRENCH,  ENGLISH,  GERMAN. 


279 


“ a French  erotic  romance,”  and  the  erotics  are  never  so 
intense  as  when  the  character  is  most  impugned.  “ The 
Sweet  Galilean  Vision  ” was  not  distinguished  by  dignity  or 
truthfulness. 

But  the  book  was  symptomatic  ; it  was  the  first  volume 
of  a series  that  increased  in  wisdom  as  it  grew  in  number, 
recognizing  throughout  this  truth — that  Christianity  was  to 
^be  explained  not  through  abstract  principles,  tendencies, 
differences,  conciliations,  but  through  its  most  creative  Per- 
sonality. And  it  was  prophetic — in  its  train  came  a succession 
of  remarkable  works ; two  of  these  were  contributions  as 
characteristic  of  Germany  and  England  as  the  “ Vie  de  Jesus” 
was  of  France.  The  English^  was  the  work  of  a scholar, 
but  not  of  a theologian  ; it  had  no  apparatus  criticus,  hardly 
any  sense  of  the  speculative,  literary,  or  historical  questions 
that  had  been  exercising  the  theological  mind  ; but,  in  part 
for  these  very  reasons,  it  was  a fresh  and  powerful  book.  It 
went,  as  it  were  unweakened  by  metaphysical  or  critical 
hesitancies,  straight  to  the  moral  heart  of  the  matter,  asked 
the  meaning  of  the  person  and  message  and  society  of  Jesus. 
He  is  so  real  because  so  moral ; and  His  morality,  which 
seems  too  ideal  to  be  practical  or  even  possible,  is  made  by 
His  method  and  its  relation  to  His  personality  eminently 
real  and  realizable.  This  book,  indeed,  was  not  the  first 
attempt  to  read  and  appraise  the  religion  through  the  character 
of  the  Founder ; it  had  been  made  long  before  by  the  genial 
and  sympathetic  spirit  of  Ullmann.  In  the  treatise  that  fitly 
introduced  the  review  that  has  so  long  and  so  excellently 
served  the  reasonable  and  irenical  school  he  represented,  he 
with  a singularly  delicate  hand  exhibited  at  once  the  historical, 
religious,  and  theological  significance  of  the  “ Sinlessness  of 
Jesus.”  ^ This  was  precisely  the  sort  of  field  which  English 
thought  could  love  and  cultivate.  And  so  Channing^  had 

1 “Ecce  Homo”  (1865).  ^ “ Studien  und  Kritiken.”  (1828),  vol.  i.,  pp.  1-83. 

* Sermon  on  the  “ Character  of  Christ.” 


28o 


THE  NEW  STRAUSS 


argued  from  the  pre-eminence  of  Christ’s  character  to  His 
supernatural  origin  and  the  truth  of  His  words  and  mission  ; 
Young ^ had  expanded  it  into  an  argument  for  His  Divinity; 
BushnelH  had  made  it  a sort  of  apologia  pro  religione  sud. 
But  “ Ecce  Homo  ” was  strong  because  so  little  theological, 
so  untechnical,  the  sort  of  fragment  that  is  created  not  so 
much  by  labour  as  by  a moment  of  vivid  intuition.  It 
detached  Christ’s  society  from  the  conventional  notions  sug- 
gested by  the  word  “ Church,”  interpreted  His  words  as  its 
laws,  and  exhibited  its  ethico-social  idea  as  the  articulated 
mind  of  its  Founder.  Without  the  knowledge  or  the  literary 
genius  of  the  “Vie  de  Jesus,”  it  yet  had,  in  a far  higher 
degree,  the  veracity  and  the  realism  that  come  only  with 
moral  insight. 

The  German  work  was  the  new  “ Leben  Jesu.”®  It  differed 
from  the  old  almost  as  much  as  Hume  from  Hegel,  Reimarus 
from  Schleiermacher.  It  was  addressed  to  the  German  nation, 
the  people  of  the  Reformation,  whose  historical  right  it  was 
to  lead  the  advance  from  the  religion  of  Christ  to  the  religion 
of  humanity.  The  tendency  in  the  new  is  more  earthward 
than  in  the  old.  The  child  of  a transcendental  stoops  to  be 
the  apostle  of  an  empirical  and  sensuous  age.  The  love  of 
truth  may  be  no  less,  but  the  hatred  of  adversaries  is  more 
intense  ; and  while  hatred  sharpens  the  eye  for  the  detection 
of  pretence,  it  blinds  it  to  the  soul  of  goodness  in  things  which 
seem  evil.  There  is  nothing  of  the  Hegelian  philosophy 
save  a faint  aroma  perceptible  here  in  a term,  there  in  a 
turn  of  thought.  The  Church  is  evil,  and  must  be  abolished 
that  the  new  religion  of  culture  may  be  realized.  The  clergy 

1 “The  Christ  of  History”  (1855). 

2 “ The  Character  of  Jesus.”  This  is  chapter  x.  in  “ Nature  and 
the  Supernatural”  (1858);  but  was  also  published  in  separate  form  in 
1861. 

3 “ Das  Leben  Jesu  fiir  das  Deutsche  Volk  bearbeitet”  (Leipzig,  1864). 
Translated,  and  published  by  Williams  & Norgate  under  the  title,  “ The 
Life  of  Jesus  for  the  People.” 


COMPARED  WITH  THE  OLD. 


28 


are  compared  to  field  mice,  set  down  as  the  slaves  of  self- 
interest,  averse  to  truth,  fighting  behind  paper  battlements 
which  do  not  deserve  a siege.^  Mediating  and  modern 
theologians  are  written  down  knaves  or  fools.^  Even  Baur 
is  not  thorough  enough  to  escape  censure,  is  described  as 
using  the  historical  interest  as  a defence  against  fanaticism, 
like  the  legal  fiction  which  saves  the  Crown  by  sacrificing 
the  Ministry.^ 

The  new  Life  is  in  some  respects  an  improvement  on  the 
old.  The  criticism  of  the  sources  is  not  so  utterly  inadequate. 
It  is  not  indeed  original,  only  derivative,  a summary  of  the 
Tubingen  results  ; but  it  is  a confession  that  history  without 
literary  criticism  is  worthless.  The  idea  of  historical  per- 
spective is  more  developed,  the  sense  for  fact  keener,  the 
worth  of  a background  to  the  person  and  character  he  would 
portray  better  understood.  The  man,  in  short,  is,  while  less 
of  a constructive  thinker,  more  of  an  artist.  But  while  there 
are  more  of  the  prerequisites  of  a genuine  life,  there  is  almost 
as  little  of  the  reality.  It  is  like  the  work  of  a decipherer, 
who,  while  ambitious  to  prove  the  date,  alphabet,  and  language 
of  an  inscription,  laboriously  leaves  its  contents  half  read  ; 
or  like  the  trick  of  a renovator,  who,  while  professing  to 
restore  the  painting'^ of  an  ancient  master,  painfully  washes  out 
its  main  lines,  and  leaves  only  isolated  patches  of  its  principal 
figure.  There  is  indeed  in  his  Jesus,  with  His  bright  and 
tranquil  Hellenic  spirit,  while  less  of  flesh  and  blood,  more  of 
intellectual  and  spiritual  reality,  than  in  the  Jesus  of  Renan. 
But  the  reality  is  modern  and  contemporary  rather  than 
historical.  Jesus  is  less  a Galilean  peasant  than  a student, 
consciously  eclectic,  receiving  into  Himself  from  various 
sources  material  to  be  built  into  unity  through  the  action 
of  His  own  consciousness.  He  is,  too,  at  best  ill  known,  has 
been  so  covered  with  parasites,  had  His  features  so  eaten 
away.  His  sap  so  sucked  out,  as  to  be  little  else  than  a 
^ P.  162.  ^P.  xix.  3 xiv.  978. 


282 


A POORER  PHILOSOPHY  DISSOLVES 


hardly  recognizable  ruin.  Of  few  great  men  do  we  know 
so  little.  But  enough  is  known  to  deprive  Him  of  unique 
pre-eminence.  He  has  had  predecessors  in  Israel  and  Hellas, 
on  the  Ganges  and  the  Oxus,  and  has  not  been  without 
successors.  He  looks  great  to  the  Church  because  clothed 
in  clouds.  These  are  not  indeed  myths  in  the  old  sense. 
The  name  remains,  but  the  thing  is  gone.  The  mythical 
theory  is  modified  out  of  existence.  Myths  cease  to  be 
unconscious  creations,  become  more  or  less  intentional  in- 
ventions. The  miracles,  whether  worked  by  Jesus  or  on 
Him,  like  the  Transfiguration  and  the  Ascension,  are  myths, 
but  made  as  often  with  as  without  a distinct  intention.  The 
Resurrection  is  the  creation  of  subjective  visions.  The 
method  is  eclectic,  Reimarus  and  Baur  having  contributed 
to  it  almost  as  much  as  the  earlier  and  later  Strauss.  But 
by  what  it  loses  in  ideality  it  gains  in  reality.  The  new 
theory,  as  less  speculative  and  more  historical  than  the  old, 
is  more  amenable  to  criticism.  And  so  the  question,  by 
being  simplified,  has  come  nearer  solution. 

The  philosophical  bases  and  goal  of  the  New  Life  in  some 
respects  develop,  but  in  general  contradict,  those  of  the  old. 
There  is  less  recognition  of  transcendental  truth,  more  dis- 
tinct acceptance  of  a natural  and  humanistic  faith.  The 
fundamental  conception  approximates  to  ancient  Stoicism, 
but  in  its  development  and  application  is  modified  by  modern 
Empiricism.  The  only  things  in  Christianity  said  to  be  im- 
perishable are  not  peculiar  to  it — “ the  belief  that  there  is 
a spiritual  and  moral  power  which  governs  the  world,”  ^ and 
the  conviction  that  “ the  service  of  this  power  can  be  only 
spiritual  and  moral,  a service  of  the  heart  and  mind.”  This 
faith  can  stand,  without  any  supernatural  aid,  on  the  natural 
order  of  the  world.  It  needs  no  future  state ; teaches  men, 
when  every  hope  of  life  is  extinguished,  not  to  comfort  the 
present  by  drawing  on  the  future ; to  live,  if  not  as  saints, 

Wor.,  xvii.  I 


RELIGION  INTO  HUMANISM. 


283 


yet  as  honourable  men ; to  die,  if  not  blissfully,  yet  calmly. 
Whatever  man  needs  lies  within  the  terms  of  nature.  Duty 
has  authority  only  as  evolved  from  what  is  involved  in  man. 
Religion  is  only  culture,  humanity  in  its  finest  bloom. 
Thought  thus  moves  on  a lower  plane  in  the  new  than  in 
the  old  life.  Strauss  has  fallen  back  on  a narrower  and  less 
exalted  conception  of  the  universe.  There  is  less  of  Deity 
in  it.  Man  has  ceased  to  be  a revelation  of  God.  There 
is  not  in  any  proper  sense  a God  to  reveal.  The  “ spiritual 
and  moral  power  which  governs  the  world  ” has  almost 
nothing  in  common  with  the  Absolute.  The  idea  of  God 
does  not  exclude  miracles  ; the  most  cogent  arguments 
against  them  are  Hume’s.  Spirit  does  not  now  reveal  itself 
in  history  in  changing  forms,  but  in  abiding  matter.  Faith 
cannot  now  be  translated  into  science,  Vorstcllungen  into 
Begriffe.  Where  distinctions  before  existed  contradictions 
now  emerge  ; the  Hegelian  distinction  is  superseded  by  one 
rougher  but  much  handier,  between  sense  and  nonsense, 
science  and  ignorance.  The  ideal  truth  is  not  saved,  while 
the  historical  reality  is  sacrificed.  A speculative  Christology 
is  never  essayed.  ^The  attributes  of  Christ  perish  with  Him, 
are  not  transferred  to  humanity.  There  is  indeed  an  ideal 
Christ,  but  He  is  to  be  construed  only  as  the  idea  of  human 
perfection.  The  idea  needs  to  be  dissociated  from  the 
historical  person,  the  religion  of  Christ  exalted  into  the  religion 
of  humanity.  Nothing  can  be  admitted  which  transcends 
nature.  Humanism  is  the  final  and  highest  goal  of  man. 

Almost  simultaneously  with  the  new  “ Leben  Jesu”  two 
other  Lives  appeared  : Schleiermacher’s  ^ and  Schenkel’s.^ 
As  to  the  former  something  has  been  already  said.  Schleier- 

^“Das  Leben  Jesu.  Vorlesungen  an  der  Universitat  zu  Berlin  im 
Jahre  1832  gehalten.  Aus  Schleiermacher’s  handschriftlichem.  Nachlasse 
u.  Nachschriften  seiner  Zuhorer  herausgegeben  von  Riitenik”  (1864).  His 
literary  executors  had  withheld  these  lectures  from  publicity  for  more  than 
thirty  years — from  fear,  Strauss  affirmed,  caused  by  his  own  early  work. 

* “ Das  Characterbild  Jesu  ''  (Wiesbaden,  1864). 


284 


SCHLEIERMACHER  AND  SCHENKEL. 


macher  created  his  Christ  out  of  the  Christian  consciousness, 
while  allowing  the  intellect,  as  critic  and  interpreter  of  the 
sources,  the  freest  play.  Throughout  his  favourite  source 
is  John  ; while  the  most  transcendental  of  all  the  Gospels, 
it  is  the  least  miraculous,  most  exalted  in  its  doctrine  of 
the  Person,  most  sober  and  natural  in  the  details  of  His 
history.  What  distinguishes  the  Christ  of  John  is  the  vivid- 
ness and  fulness  of  his  consciousness  of  God,  though  it  does 
not  involve  His  identity  with  the  Divine,  only  the  unity  of 
His  thought  and  will  and  life  with  the  Father.  Strauss 
regarded  the  work  as  a challenge  to  criticism,  and  he 
criticised  thus  : Its  Christ  is  not  the  Jesus  of  history,^  but 
an  ideal  creation,  the  last  refuge  of  the  ancient  faith,  built 
out  of,  not  confessional,  but  emotional  and  imaginative, 
material — “ a reminiscence  from  long-forgotten  days,  as  it 
were  the  light  of  a distant  star,  which,  while  the  body  whence 
it  came  w^as  extinguished  years  ago,  still  meets  the  eye.”  ^ 

Schenkel’s  was  mainly  remarkable  for  the  way  in  which 
he  offended  men  of  all  schools,  and  his  preference  for  Mark 
as  the  oldest  and  most  trustworthy  source.  Keim  ^ achieved 
higher  and  better  things,  his  work  being  throughout  dis- 
tinguished by  a keen,  at  once  historical  and  spiritual,  sense. 
He  set  Jesus  within  a living  Judaea,  analyzed  the  forces  that 
played  upon  and  helped  to  form  Him,  and  endeavoured  to 
construe  His  life  from  within,  to  read  His  history  as  if  it  were 
an  externalization  of  His  mind  and  spirit,  though  as  such 
throughout  conditioned  by  Plis  place  and  time.  In  Keim’s 
attitude  there  were  many  conflicting  elements  ; he  wished  to 
remain  within  the  terms  of  nature,  yet  ever  seemed  to  feel  as 
if  his  subject  transcended  them  ; the  love  of  the  rational  and 

^ “ Der  Christas  des  Glaubens  and  der  Jesus  der  Geschichte,”  1865. 

^ Ibid.^  p.  220. 

^ “Die  Menschliche  Entwickelung  Jesu”  (1861),  “Die  Geschichtliche 
Wiirde  Jesu  ” (1864),  “Der  Geschich.  Christus”  (1865);  but  mainly  the 
great  work  which  incorporated  all  these,  “ Geschichte  Jesu  von  Nazara  in 
ihrer  Verkettung  mit  dem  Gesamtleben  seines  Volkes  ” (1867-1872). 


THE  NEWER  LITERATURE. 


285 


the  sense  of  the  supernatural  so  contended  within  him  that, 
with  all  its  detail,  and  all  its  dogmatisms,  and  all  its  arbitrari- 
ness, his  book  is  a book  of  suggestions  rather  than  of  final 
determinations.  It  is  filled  throughout  with  the  conviction 
that  in  the  life  which  had  so  mightily  affected  man  there  must 
be  elements  which  explain  its  action,  and  these  can  never  be 
understood  by  the  man  who  shuts  himself  within  a narrow 
and  prosaic  naturalism,  excluding  from  the  present  he  studies 
the  future  it  has  created. 

But  detailed  or  even  incidental  mention  of  the  really  signifi- 
cant recent  works  on  this  field  is  simply  impossible,  though 
ail  are  marked  by  the  same  characteristic  conviction — viz.,  that 
literary,  historical,  and  theological  criticism  must  here  go 
hand  in  hand.  They  have  been  critical  and  conciliatory,  like 
Weizsacker’s,  Weiss’s,  and  Beyschlag’s,  which,  dealing  often 
freely  with  the  literature,  yet  regard  Jesus  as  by  indefeasible 
right  of  inner  being  or  character  belonging  to  an  order 
higher  than  the  natural.  Or  they  have  been  conservative 
and  apologetic,  like  the  “Jesus  Christ”  of  Pressense,  Gess’s 
interpretation  of  the  Person  through  the  consciousness, 
Steinmeyer’s  “Contributions  to  Christology,”  and  Luthardt’s 
lectures ; or  they  have  been  critical  and  negative,  like 
Volkmar’s  “Jesus  Nazarenus,”  or  the  books  of  Wittichen 
and  Lang.  And  what  is  no  less  encouraging  is  that  Catholics 
have  been  as  active  as  Protestants,  whether  German,  like 
Grimm  and  Neumann ; or  French,  like  Dupanloup  and 
Bougaud,  Lasserre  and  Didon.  In  England  Farrar  and  Geikie 
and  Edersheim  are  familiar  names,  the  last  having  in  his  own 
line  of  rabbinical  learning  made  a considerable  contribution  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  world  which  surrounded  Jesus.  “ Super- 
natural Religion  ” ought  not  to  be  forgotten  ; it  was  as  if 
Tubingen  had  come  to  life  again  and  assumed  in  its  resurgent 
state  our  English  speech,  yet  with  a difference.  It  had  all 
the  old  a priori  and  doctrinaire  method,  but  its  sources 
were  directly  modern,  indirectly  ancient — i.e.y  it  tried  to  reach 


286 


CHRIST  AND  CONTEMPORARY  HISTORY. 


primitive  Christianity  through  Tubingen  ; but  what  it  reached 
was  Tubingen  rather  than  Christianity.  Taken  as  a whole — 
though  it  is  a whole  that  admits,  as  certain  of  the  above 
names  will  show,  remarkable  rather  than  weighty  exceptions 
— we  may  say  that  more  recent  Lives  are  distinguished  by 
a growing  sense  of  being  on  firm  historical  ground,  and  of 
using  sources  that  the  more  they  are  critically  handled  can 
be  the  more  intelligently  trusted.  It  is  surely  a matter  on 
which  all  parties  will  agree,  that  what  has  so  restricted  the 
reign  of  speculation  as  to  enlarge  the  area  of  reality  has 
brought  with  it  little  but  pure  gain.  In  the  region  of  the 
highest  and  most  potent  life  nothing  but  good  can  come  from 
the  knowledge  of  the  honest  truth. 

§ II. — Through  History  to  Theology. 

But  the  significant  thing  is  that  no  examination  of  Lives 
can  exhibit  the  gain  ; so  many  distinct  yet  convergent  lines 
of  inquiry  have  helped  to  make  our  views  more  historical. 
These  may  be  represented  thus  : — 

i.  Contemporary  History. — It  is  but  in  keeping  with 
modern  scientific  method  that  the  environment  should  be 
carefully  studied  and  minutely  known  in  order  to  the  know- 
ledge of  the  organism.  This  means  that  the  New  Testament 
cannot  be  studied  in  isolation,  but  must  be  set  against  its 
living  background ; or,  to  vary  the  figure,  planted  in  its 
native  soil.  But  it  is  not  a single  picture  or  plant ; it  is  a 
series  of  pictures  with  many  and  varied  backgrounds,  a col- 
lection of  plants  that  grew  on  many  and  different  soils.  The 
Gospels  move  within  a limited  area,  but  it  is  an  area  crowded 
with  conflicting  forces,  very  varied  in  their  distribution  and 
in  their  values.  The  main  scene  of  the  Synoptic  history  is 
Galilee — of  the  Johannean,  Judaea;  and  these  differ  almost  as 
much  as  if  they  were  alien  in  race  and  religion  —as,  indeed, 
in  great  part  they  were.  In  Galilee  the  great  institution  was 


THE  JUD^A  IN  WHICH  HE  LIVED. 


287 


the  synagogue  ; in  Judsea,  the  Temple  : where  the  synagogue 
was  in  power  the  rabbi  was  the  minister,  religion  was  instruc- 
tion, the  law  was  ceremonial,  the  authority  was  the  written 
Word  and  its  oral  interpretation,  and  worship  the  acts  and 
exercises  of  a popular  assembly ; where  the  Temple  was 
supreme  the  priest  was  the  minister,  religion  was  ritual,  the 
law  was  sacerdotal,  the  authority  was  the  sacred  institution 
and  its  customs,  and  worship  the  rites  and  sacrifices  of  the 
altar.  In  Galilee  the  Pharisee,  in  Judsea  the  Sadducee,  was 
the  authoritative  and  active  person  in  religion  ; the  former 
had  as  the  peculiar  field  of  his  activity  the  school  and  the 
synagogue,  but  the  latter  had  as  his  the  Temple ; the  scribes 
were  mainly  of  the  Pharisees,  but  the  priests  of  the  Sad- 
ducees.  Now,  differences  like  these  could  not  but  variously 
condition  life  in  the  two  provinces ; the  influences,  the  ques- 
tions, the  ideas  and  notes  of  religion  were  all  different ; the 
same  person  could  hardly  seem  the  same  when  transplanted 
from  the  one  to  the  other,  and  the  difference  would  be  in 
precise  proportion  to  the  strength  and  intensity  of  his  action 
on  religion.  But  insight  into  these  differences  and  what  they 
signified  is  a very  recent  thing ; accurate  discrimination  of 
the  two  great  parties  may  be  said  to  have  begun  only  in  the 
latter  half  of  our  century,  and  the  result  has  been  to  give  us 
a more  vivid  and  a more  veracious  view  of  the  conditions 
under  which  Jesus  lived.  We  know  better  the  influences  that 
surrounded  Him,  the  forces  He  had  to  contend  against,  the 
causes  of  His  changeful  fortunes  in  Galilee,  of  the  final  catas- 
trophe at  Jerusalem.  Of  the  many  gains  two  especially 
concern  us  here.  We  are  better  able  to  test  the  veracity  of 
the  sources  and  to  judge  as  to  the  truth  and  verisimilitude 
of  the  history,  and  we  are  better  qualified  to  measure  the 
forces  then  active  in  Judaea,  what  they  could  and  what  they 
could  not  do,  whether  they  were  equal  to  the  creation  of 
either  the  historical  or  the  ideal  Christ,  whether  He  but 
impersonated  or  really  transcended  His  conditions. 


288 


CONSTRUCTIVE  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM. 


Of  course,  the  value  of  this  study  is  not  confined  to  the 
Gospels  ; it  is  even  more  necessary  to  our  knowledge  of  the 
Apostolic  age.  By  giving  knowledge  of  the  various  environ- 
ments into  which  the  new  religion  passed,  it  helps  to  explain 
its  tendency  not  to  indefinite  variation,  but  to  variations  of 
given  types  along  given  lines.  Without  it  Paul  could  not 
be  understood  ; with  it  the  one-sided  and  a priori  Tubingen 
construction  of  him  is  impossible.  It  is  teaching  us  to  know 
something  of  the  varied  forces  that  modified  Judaism  at  home 
and  abroad,  to  distinguish  the  many  types  of  Hellenism — 
Syrian,  Alexandrian,  Italian,  Grecian — to  analyze  its  action 
alike  on  the  formation  of  heretical  and  catholic  thought,  of 
the  separate  communities  and  the  organized  Church.  It  is 
teaching  us  no  less  to  study  the  action  of  Greek  and  Roman 
cities,  their  politics,  commerce,  guilds,  schools,  customs,  on 
the  Christian  societies  and  their  leaders,  and  is  helping  us 
to  understand  how  kindred  germs  in  different  environments 
may  become  very  different  organisms.  On  the  whole,  it  has 
become  manifest  that  without  accurate  knowledge  of  contem- 
porary history  no  scientific  criticism  or  construction  of  ancient 
Christianity  is  in  any  respect  possible. 

2.  Increased  knowledge  of  contemporary  history  has  made 
constructive  historical  criticism  much  more  possible.  To  the 
new  historical  temper  the  Tubingen  method  is  peculiarly  alien, 
especially  its  notion  of  history  as  an  immanent  or  a dialectical 
evolution  of  thought  by  means  of  antithesis  and  synthesis,  a sort 
of  naturalism  stated  in  the  language  of  the  pure  intellect.  Its 
questions  are  matters  of  fact,  of  evidence  and  interpretation, 
not  of  the  determination  and  development  of  the  idea.  Ritschl  ^ 
challenged  the  right  of  the  criticism  that  settled  the  question 
of  miracles  by  philosophy,  to  the  name  historical.  And  it  was 
a question  Baur  had  at  the  most  critical  point  evaded.  The 
reality  of  the  faith  in  the  Resurrection  had  been  for  him  the 
main  thing  ; but  for  history  the  main  thing — indeed,  the  only 
^ “ J^-h^b.  fiir  deuts.  Theol.,”  vol.  vi.,  pp.  429  ff. 


APOSTOLIC  DIFFERENCES  IMPLY  AGREEMENTS.  289 

real  thing — was  the  fact  rather  than  the  faith.  And  this  was 
typical ; it  was  only  the  most  flagrant  example  of  his  theory 
that  history  was  but  the  evolution  of  the  Spirit,  the  genesis  of 
the  Church  only  the  conciliation  of  differences.  Historical 
criticism  followed  the  reverse  process — abandoned  theory  for 
a study  and  analysis  of  all  the  conditions,  examined  the 
organism  and  environment  in  their  mutual  relations  with  a 
view  to  the  exhibition  of  the  final  result.  If  the  ancient 
Church  were  so  approached,  the  Pauline  differences  could  not 
be  made  the  constructive  starting-point ; they  were  conse- 
quences rather  than  causes  ; what  was  necessary  was  to  get 
behind  them.  In  the  matter  of  radical  belief  as  to  the  place 
and  person  of  Christ  there  were  indeed  differences,  but  not 
contradictions,  in  the  Apostolic  circle.  And  these  differences 
assumed  a sort  of  unity,  or  at  least  received  explanation,  when 
viewed  in  relation  to  Him.  He  had  declared  that  He  had  come 
to  found  a new  covenant  over  against  the  old  ; and  here  all 
parties  were  at  one.^  On  this  point  the  Synoptics  were  more 
emphatic  than  John  ; and  Mark,  the  oldest  of  the  Gospels,  as 
explicit  as  either  Matthew  or  Luke.  But  when  the  Apostolic 
men  made  the  attempt  to  conceive  and  represent  what  this 
meant,  the  differences  emerged  ; and  in  order  to  understand 
why  they  did,  all  the  conditions  and  forces  of  the  time  must 
be  considered.  There  was  a double  transformation  or  de-* 
velopment — viz.,  of  doctrine  and  of  polity — and  to  each,  as 
parallel  and  correlative,  all  parties  contributed, — the  men  who 
knew  the  Old  Testament  and  construed  Christ  through  it  quite 
as  much  as  the  men  who  came  to  the  Old  Testament  only 
through  Christ ; but  to  both  He  was  equally  and  essentially 
the  Christ,  founder  of  their  society,  source  of  their  faith.  This 
meant  that  the  personal  Christ  played  not  only  a much  greater 
part  in  the  creation  of  His  society  than  Tubingen  had  assigned 
to  Him,  but  a part  so  great  that  He  was  everything  to  it, 
source  alike  of  the  differences  by  which  it  only  the  more  lived 
^ Ritschl,  “Die  Entstehung  der  altkathol.  Kirche,”pp.  27 ff.  (1857), 

19 


290 


PSYCHOLOGY  IN  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM. 


and  did  Him  reverence,  and  of  the  methods  and  reason  by 
which  they  were  overcome. 

So  much  did  the  new  lines  of  inquiry  affect  the  critics  of  the 
newest  Tubingen  School  that  they  abandoned  metaphysics  and 
took  to  psychology,  yet  so  as  only  the  more  to  emphasize  the 
significance  now  given  to  the  person  and  work  of  Christ.  Thus, 
as  they  could  not  surrender  their  fixed  point,  Paul  was 
interpreted  through  his  mental  constitution  ; he  became  an 
epileptic  who  could  not  but  see  visions  and  mistake  them  for 
realities,  or  a dialectician  so  compacted  of  nerves  and  reason,  of 
sensitive  fiesh  and  susceptible  soul,  that  he  was  forced  to  trans- 
late his  experience  into  a system  of  the  universe.  As  a 
compound  of  enthusiast  and  schoolman  his  formulae  came  to 
him  from  various  sources — the  constructive  impulse  from  his 
conversion,  but  the  real  material  he  used  from  his  own  ex- 
perience. Still,  psychology  carries  us  but  a very  little  way 
in  historical  criticism.  The  more  Paul’s  idiosyncrasies  were 
magnified  the  more  remarkable  became  the  force  that  caused 
him  to  do  what  he  did.  But  this  certainly,  in  the  very  degree 
it  magnified  his  peculiar  character,  tended  to  exalt  the  personal 
significance  of  Christ : He  becomes  more  and  more  evidently 
the  cause  of  all  that  is  pre-eminent  in  Paul  and  in  the  Apostolic 
age  as  a whole ; the  forces  that  belittle  and  deprave  rise  from  the 
conditions  into  which  His  society  enters,  not  from  Him.  And 
this  has  further  resulted  in  emphasizing  the  most  cardinal  of  all 
the  facts  which  the  Tubingen  men  overlooked — the  new  life  that 
came  in  with  Christ  and  through  Him.  Of  this  life  the  thought 
which  Baur  so  dwelt  on  was  but  the  expression.  But  the  life  w'as 
more  than  the  thought — its  source,  reason,  the  soil  out  of  which 
it  grew,  the  energy  by  which  it  lived.  And  the  life  is  a most 
manifest  effect,  existent  in  all  the  Apostles,  creating  a new 
literary  capability,  a new  ethical,  social,  religious  spirit,  a society 
of  brother  missionaries,  possessed  of  the  enthusiasm  to  heal  and 
to  save.  And  once  thought  enters  into  the  meaning  of  this 
new  life  and  its  value  for  humanity,  it  is  forced  back  on  its 


THE  NEWER  LITERARY  CRITICISM. 


291 


cause,  and  compelled  to  see  that  without  Christ  the  greatest 
movement  in  history  has  neither  a beginning  nor  an  end. 

3.  But  coincident  with  the  historical  has  been  a new  literary 
criticism.  With  the  disappearance  of  the  old  theory  of  sharp 
antitheses,  the  arguments  which  restricted  the  Pauline  Epistles 
to  four  have  lost  their  force,  and  even  critics  of  the  negative 
order  have  allowed  both  the  Thessalonians  and  Philippians 
to  find  their  way  into  the  circle  of  the  authentic.  While  as 
to  the  others  more  accurate  knowledge  as  to  the  forms  and 
distribution  of  Gnosticism  is  shedding  new  light  on  their  origin, 
succession,  and  meaning.  The  Apocalypse,  too,  is  seen  to 
have  another  value  than  Baur  assigned  to  it,  and  the  criticism 
of  the  Gospels  has  simply  been  revolutionized.  By  a process 
of  the  most  minute  and  rigidly  scientific  investigation  the 
Synoptics  have  been  proved  to  stand  in  relations  fatal  alike 
to  the  order  and  the  tendencies  of  Tubingen.  Mark  is  now 
held  to  be  the  oldest,  and  the  discussion  as  to  the  sources 
and  the  dependencies  of  all  the  three  is  carrying  us,  alike 
as  regards  the  history  and  the  words  of  Jesus,  to  a stand- 
point where  the  ancient  harmonist  and  the  recent  mythicist 
alike  cease  to  trouble.  The  Fourth  Gospel,  too,  is  read  with 
an  opener  sense,  a cycle  of  tradition  that  helps  to  explain 
it  is  being  slowly  recovered,  and  a clearer  and  more 
literary  conception  of  the  relation  of  the  speeches  both  to 
the  speaker  and  the  reporter  is  being  formed,  while  a broader 
notion  of  its  method  and  function  is  filling  it  with  a new 
historical  content.  In  a word,  just  as  the  mind  which 
comes  to  the  New  Testament  has  grown  more  historical, 
it  has  become  more  historical  to  the  mind — the  mind  has 
been  able  to  discover  a more  historical  character  in  the 
literature,  has  trusted  abstract  principles  less,  has  studied 
the  textual,  philological,  and  literary  matter  and  minutiae 
more,  with  the  natural  result  that  the  more  scientific  treat- 
ment has  obtained  more  assured  results.  In  this  field  the 
services  of  English  scholarship  have  been  conspicuous  and 


292  BIBLICAL  THEOLOGY  AND  HISTORICAL  CRITICISM. 

meritorious,  and  happily  complementary  to  the  more  auda- 
cious and  brilliant  inquiries  of  Continental  scholars. 

4.  The  new  historical  and  literary  spirit  has  produced  a 
more  detailed  and  skilful  handling  of  the  thought  or  intel- 
lectual content  of  the  literature.  The  sacred  writers  are 
not  now  dealt  with  as  if  their  personalities  had  been  merged 
into  one  colossal  individuality,  and  as  if  the  very  composite 
material  they  had  created  were  a single  work  which  could 
be  interpreted  and  quoted  as  a homogeneous  whole.  The 
new  insight  into  the  characters,  histories,  circumstances,  suc- 
cession of  the  writers,  has  necessitated  a distinct  and  special 
treatment  of  their  minds  and  words,  which  has,  as  notably  in  the 
case  of  Paul,  enabled  us  to  measure  and  register  the  change 
and  expansion  of  their  thought.  “ Biblical  theology  ” means 
now  the  theology  of  the  Bible,  not  of  the  creeds  or  schools. 
Within  the  New  Testament  the  most  careful  and  exhaustive 
work  of  this  kind  has  been  done.  We  can  now  with 
reverence,  yet  with  accuracy,  speak  of  “ the  theology  ” 
or  “the  doctrine  of  Jesus.”  And  works  like  Wendt’s^  shed 
through  the  theology  needed  light  upon  the  Person.  His 
great  terms  and  phrases,  like  “ the  Messiah,”  “ the  Son  of 
Man,”  “ the  Son,”  “ the  Kingdom  of  God,”  “ the  New  Cove- 
nant”— His  great  sayings,  parables,  discourses,  like  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount — His  addresses  to  His  disciples — - 
His  warnings  to  the  Pharisees — His  prayers  in  Gethsemane 
and  words  on  the  cross, — have  all  been  analyzed,  compared, 
explained  ; His  speeches  in  John  have  been  read  at  once  in 
comparison  and  in  contrast  with  those  in  the  Synoptics ; 
and  so  we  have  been  invited,  as  it  were,  to  know  Him  as  He 
knew  Himself,  to  understand  His  mission  as  it  was  in  His 
mind  and  before  it  had  been  touched  by  the  spirit  of  Paul 
or  seized  by  the  coarse  hands  of  controversy. 

And  Paul  has  been  even  more  elaborately  discussed,  dis- 
solved, and,  as  it  were,  rearticulated.  His  own  authentic 


“Die  Lehre  Jesu  ” (1886  and  1890). 


THE  MASTER  TRANSCENDS  THE  DISCIPLES. 


293 


words  still  throb  with  the  passion  or  glow  with  the  love 
that  filled  him  as  he  wrote  ; we  can  follow  his  swift  though 
not  always  obvious  logic,  and  reconstruct  his  world  while 
we  interpret  his  mind.  Hebrews  and  John,  Peter  and  James, 
have  been  similarly  treated  and  explained,  and  we  can  now 
look  at  the  thought  of  the  New  Testament  in  its  constituent 
parts,  in  its  historical  succession,  and  as  a complete,  if  not 
organic,  whole.  Its  differences,  the  affinities  they  imply  but 
cannot  conceal,  its  evolution  and  its  causes,  we  can  now 
trace,  and  one  thing  is  beginning  to  stand  out  with  a per- 
fectly new  distinctness — viz.,  the  degree  in  which  the  mind  of 
the  Master  transcends  the  minds  of  the  disciples  ; not  the 
way  they  develop  His  teaching,  but  how  they  fail  to  do  it  ; 
the  elements  they  miss  or  ignore,  forget  or  do  not  see. 
Where  Paul  is  greatest  is  where  he  is  most  directly  under 
the  influence  or  in  the  hands  of  Jesus,  evolving  the  content 
of  what  he  had  received  concerning  Him  ; where  he  is 
weakest  is  where  his  old  scholasticism  or  his  new  antagon- 
ism dominates  alike  the  form  and  substance  of  his  thought. 
So  with  John  : what  in  him  is  permanent  and  persuasive 
is  of  Christ ; what  is  local  and  even  trivial  is  of  himself  To 
exhibit  in  full  the  falling  off  in  the  Apostles  cannot  be 
attempted  here  ; enough  to  say,  their  conception  of  God  is,  if 
not  lower,  more  outward,  less  intimate,  or,  as  it  were,  from 
within  ; nor  does  it,  with  all  its  significance  as  to  the  absolute 
Paternity,  penetrate  like  a subtle  yet  genial  spirit  their  whole 
mind,  all  their  thought  and  all  their  being.  They  have  lost 
also,  in  some  measure  at  least,  what  is  its  earthly  counterpart — 
the  social  form  under  which  it  can  be  realized  in  time,  the 
idea  of  the  kingdom,  with  all  it  implies  as  to  the  human 
brotherhood  which  expresses  the  Divine  Sonship.  Their 
ethics  have  lost  the  wonderful  searching  inwardness  yet  fine 
sanity  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  ; their  conduct  is  more 
mixed,  their  tempers  are  more  troubled  and  troublesome  ; 
they  so  live  as  to  show  more  of  the  infirmities  of  man  and 


294  the  century  of  the  recovered  CHRIST. 

less  of  the  calm  which  comes  of  the  complete  possession  of 
God.  These  are  differences  which  Tubingen  overlooked,  but 
they  do  more  to  distinguish  and  differentiate  the  schools  in 
the  early  Church  than  any  it  discovered.  But  does  not  this 
mean  that  the  very  process  which  has  reclaimed  Christ  for 
knowledge  has  tended  to  restore  Him  to  faith?  He  stands 
out  in  a new  degree  and  way  the  creator  of  His  society, 
with  thoughts  greater  than  it  has  been  able  to  assimilate, 
source  of  its  continuous  progress  by  making  the  re-interpre- 
tation of  His  person  its  constant  and  inevitable  problem. 

§ HI. — Results  and  Inferences. 

1.  This  history  may  be  described  as  an  inquiry  into  the 
causes  and  the  process  by  which  the  historical  Christ  has  been 
recovered.  It  has  been  due  to  no  single  man  or  book,  but 
represents  a tendency  or  movement  which  individuals  have 
served,  but  no  individual  created.  Literature,  philosophy, 
criticism,  theology,  religion,  have  all  contributed  to  it,  and  the 
result  has  been  due  to  their  common  action,  which  has  been 
all  the  more  concordant  that  it  was  so  undesigned.  The 
Person  that  literature  felt  to  be  its  loftiest  ideal,  philosoph}^ 
conceived  as  its  highest  personality,  criticism  as  its  supreme 
problem,  theology  as  its  fundamental  datum,  religion  as  its 
cardinal  necessity.  The  most  destructive  efforts  became  the 
conditions  of  the  most  constructive  achievements,  and  the 
century  whose  middle  decades  were  marked  by  a process  of 
historical  and  literary  disintegration,  finds  its  last  decade 
distinguished  by  a process  of  re-integration,  or  a new  and 
profounder  sense  of  the  historical  reality  and  pre-eminence  of 
the  Person  who  had  been  mythically  dissolved  or  dialectically 
construed  into  a product  of  conflicting  tendencies. 

2.  The  new  sense  of  His  historical  being  and  transcendence 
is  reflected  in  the  changed  tone  and  attitude  of  literature. 
The  ethical  idealization  of  Schiller  and  the  rather  benevolent 


nis  PLACE  IN  LITERATURE. 


295 


or  condescending  allusions  of  Goethe,  as  of  one  speaking  from 
a lofty  height  concerning  another  who  had  struggled  upwards 
to  a lower  standpoint,  are  now  unknown.  The  two  most 
illustrious  poets  of  our  era  were  distinguished  by  their  feeling 
not  for  the  abstract  and  ideal,  but  for  the  concrete  and 
historical  Christ.  But  even  more  significant  is  the  case  of  the 
most  typical  English  man  of  letters  in  our  generation.  Matthew 
Arnold  was  an  earnest,  though  we  can  hardly  call  him  a serious, 
religious  teacher.  He  was,  indeed,  anything  but  this  at  the 
outset — classical,  almost  pagan  in  his  restraint  and  suppression 
of  himself  towards  religion.  Goethe  was  his  saint  and  ideal, 
“ Europe’s  sagest  head,”  “ the  physician  of  the  iron  age.” 

“ He  took  the  suffering  human  race, 

He  read  each  wound,  each  weakness  clear, 

And  struck  his  finger  on  the  place, 

And  said,  Thou  ailest  here,  aitd  here  ! ” 

But  the  more  Arnold  came  to  feel  the  historical  reality  of 
Jesus,  the  more  he  fell  under  His  invincible  charm  and  bowed 
before  His  religious  supremacy.  And  the  poet  and  man  of 
letters  changed  his  role.  He  tried  to  become  the  interpreter 
of  Christ,  as  it  were  a new  apostle,  charged  to  preach  Elis 
Gospel,  the  secret  he  had  found  in  His  Word,  to  the  age  of  the 
Philistines.  It  might  not  be  a great  secret,  many  had  found 
it  before  him,  but  the  remarkable  thing  was  not  the  quality 
or  range  of  his  truth,  but  the  fact  of  his  message  and  the 
reality  of  his  vocation  as  he  conceived  it.  It  was  a sort  of 
spontaneous  confession  by  one  whose  love  was  culture,  that 
the  sure  way  to  be  cultivated  was  to  learn  and  follow  the 
secret  of  Him  who  in  spite  of  His  lowly  estate  was  yet  the 
finest  ideal  of  humanity. 

3.  But  this  historical  Christ  means  much  more  for  the 
Church  than  for  literature.  We  cannot  stand  as  we  now  do 
face  to  face  with  Him  in  a sense  and  to  a degree  unknown 
in  the  Church  since  the  Apostolic  age,  and  be  as  we  were 
before.  For  this  immediacy  of  knowledge  compels  the 


296 


CHRIST  IN  THE  CHURCH, 


comparison  of  our  societies,  conventions,  and  systems  with  His 
mind  and  ideal.  As  He  is  the  source  and  the  authority  of 
alPthe  Churches,  no  Church  can  refuse  to  be  measured  and 
judged  by  Him.  No  development  can  be  legitimate  that  is 
alien  to  His  spirit  and  purpose. 

4.  He  thus  becomes  the  determinative  idea  in  ecclesiastical 
questions.  The  Fathers  cannot  explain  Christ,  though  He 
can  explain  the  Fathers.  He  is  ultimate,  but  they  are  deriva- 
tive. Their  knowledge  is  as  less  historical,  more  defective, 
than  ours;  and  where  knowledge  is  inadequate  the  judgment 
can  never  be  final.  The  old  Protestant  appeal  to  Paul  was 
more  reasonable  than  the  Tractarian  appeal  to  the  undivided 
Church  of  East  and  West,  or  the  Ultramontane  appeal  to  a 
central  and  infallible  authority ; for  Paul  had  the  Apostolic 
knowledge  that  was  the  basis  of  Apostolic  authority,  but  the 
undivided  Church  could  not  have  the  authority,  for  it  did 
not  possess  the  knowledge,  while  the  Ultramontane  authority 
is  one  the  sources  can  better  judge  than  it  can  judge  the 
sources.  The  authority  which  the  ancient  Church  was  without 
the  modern  Church  cannot  possess ; and  so  neither  it  nor  any 
branch  of  it  can  be  the  norm  of  Christ,  while  He  is  the  norm 
of  the  whole  Church,  and  of  all  its  branches. 

5.  This  return  has  made  evident  to  us  the  true  historical 
method  in  criticism.  It  must  proceed  from  the  source  down- 
w'ards,  and  not  simply  be  contented  to  judge  the  source  by 
what  w^e  find  far  down  the  stream.  Above  in  the  fountain 
there  is  purity,  but  below  in  the  river  impurities  that  gather 
as  the  course  lengthens  and  the  fields  tilled  and  reaped  of  men 
are  drained  into  its  waters. 

6.  But  even  less  than  literature  and  the  Church  and  criticism 
can  theology  remain  unaffected  by  this  return,  as  it  were, 
into  His  very  presence.  We  all  feel  the  distance  placed 
by  fifty  years  of  the  most  radical  and  penetrating  critical 
discussions  between  us  and  the  older  theology,  and  as  the 
distance  widens  the  theology  that  then  reigned  grows  less 


IN  CRITICISM,  AND  IN  THEOLOGY. 


297 


credible  because  less  relevant  to  living  mind.  Does  this 
mean  that  the  days  of  definite  theological  beliefs  are  over,  or 
not  rather  that  the  attempt  ought  to  be  made  to  restate  them 
in  more  living  and  relevant  terms  ? One  thing  seems  clear : 
if  a Christian  theology  means  a theology  of  Christ,  at  once 
concerning  Him  and  derived  from  Him,  then  to  construct 
one  ought,  because  of  our  greater  knowledge  of  Him  and  His 
history,  to  be  more  possible  to-day  than  at  any  previous 
moment.  And  if  this  is  clear,  then  the  most  provisional 
attempt  at  performing  the  possible  is  more  dutiful  than  the 
selfish  and  idle  acquiescence  that  would  simply  leave  the  old 
theology  and  the  new  criticism  standing  side  by  side,  unrelated 
and  unreconciled. 


BOOK  II 


THEOLOGICAL  AND  CONSTRUCTIVE. 

Div  l.—THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  INTEEPEE  TAT/ON  OF 
CHEIST. 

Div.  W.— CHEIST  THE  INTE  EPEE  TAT/ON  OF  GOD. 

Div.  lll.—THEINTEEPEETED  GOD  AS  THE  DETEEMINATIVE 
PEINCIPLE. 


A.  — Of  Theology. 

B.  — Of  the  Church. 


A.  Ecce  oravi  Deum.  R.  Quid  ergo  scire  vis  ? A.  Haec  ipsa  omnia 
quse  oravi.  R.  Breviter  ea  collige.  A.  Deum  et  animam  scire  cupio. 
R.  Nihilne  plus?  A.  Nihil  omnino. — Augustine,  “ Solil.,”  lib.  i.,  c.  2. 

Tu  verb  es  quod  es  : quia  quicquid  aliquando,  aut  aliquo  modo  es  : 
hoc  totus,  et  semper  es.  Et  tu  es  qui  proprie  et  simpliciter  es  : quia 
nec  habes  fuisse,  aut  futurum  esse ; sed  tantum  praesens  esse  nec 
potes  cogitari  aliquando  non  esse.  Sed  et  vita  es,  et  lux,  et  sapientia 
et  beatitude,  et  seternitas,  et  multa  hujusmodi  bona;  et  tamen  non 
es  nisi  unum  et  summum  bonum,  tu  tibi  omnino  sufficiens,  et  nullo 
indigens  ; quo  omnia  indigent  ut  sint,  et  ut  bene  sint. — Anselm, 
“Proslogium,”  c.  22. 

Divina  bonitasest  finis  rerum  omnium. — Thomas  Aquinas,  “Summa,” 
P.  I,  Q.  44,  art.  4. 

In  illo  summo  bono  universaliterque  perfecto  est  totius  bonitatis 
plenitude  atque  perfectio.  Ubi  autem  totius  bonitatis  plenitude  est, 
vera  et  summa  charitas  deesse  non  potest.  Nihil  enim  charitate  melius, 
nihil  charitate  perfectius.  Nullus  autem  pro  private  et  proprio  sui  ipsius 
amore  dicitur  proprie  charitatem  habere.  Oportet  itaque  ut  amor  in 
alterum  tendat,  ut  charitas  esse  queat.  Ubi  ergo  plurahtas  personarum 
deest,  charitas  omnino  esse  non  potest. — Richard  of  St.  Victor,  “De 
Trin.,”  lib.  ii.,  c.  2. 

Die  christliche  Religion  hat  ihren  historischen  Grund  und  Quell- 
punkt  in  der  Person  Jesu.  Diese  giebt  beidem,  dem  Christenthum  und 
seinem  Dogma,  seinen  geschichtlich  bestimmten,  d.  h.  positiven 
Charakter. 

Das  religiose  Verhaltniss,  das  als  objectiv  neue  Gottesoffenbarung  in 
der  menschlich  neuen  Thatsache  des  religiosen  Selbstbewusstseins 
Jesu  in  die  Menschheitsgeschichte  eingetreten  ist  und  das  Realprincip 
der  cbristlichen  Gemeinschaft  und  ihres  Glaubens  ausmacht,  ist  in  der 
Gotteskindschaft  als  der  unmittelbaren  Selbstaussage  des  religiosen 
Selbstbewusstseins  Jesu  ausgedriickt.  Der  Inhalt  dieses  Begriffes  ist 
der  Inhalt  des  christlichen  Principes : das  Christenthum  ist  die  Religion 
dfer  in  Jesu  fiir  die  Menschheit  real  aufgeschlossenen  Gotteskindschaft 
und  damit  des  in  dieser  sich  realisirenden  Gottesreiches  als  des  gott- 
lichen  Endzweckes  der  Menschheit. — Biedermann,  “Dogmatik,”  §§  158 
and  160. 


DIVISION  I. 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  INTERPRETATION  OF 

CHRIST. 

HE  questions  that  fall  to  be  discussed  in  this  Second 


X Book  are  mainly  of  two  kinds, — exegetical,  concerned 
with  the  source  of  our  Christian  conception  of  God  ; and  con- 
structive, concerned  with  its  explication.  We  use  exegesis 
that  we  may  think  of  God  as  Christ  did  ; but  we  construct 
a theology  when  His  conception  of  God  is  made  the  idea 
through  which  we  interpret  the  universe.  His  consciousness 
is  the  source  and  norm  of  the  conception,  but  the  conception 
is  the  source  and  norm  of  the  theology.  This  theology  must 
then,  to  use  a current  term,  be,  as  regards  source,  Christo- 
centric, but,  as  regards  object  or  matter,  theo-centric  ; in  other 
words,  while  Christ  determines  the  conception,  the  conception 
determines  the  theology.  Hence,  what  we  have  to  do  is,  first, 
to  attempt  to  interpret  God  through  the  history  and  con- 
sciousness of  Christ ; and,  secondly,  to  elaborate  this  inter- 
pretation into  the  main  lines  of  a Christian  theology. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  EXPOSITORY  BOOKS, 

HE  New  Testament  as  a whole  may  be  described  as  a 


X series  of  co-ordinate  rather  than  successive  attempts 
at  an  interpretation  of  Christ  These  attempts  are  either 
historical  or  constructive,  and  by  no  means  represent  one 
uniform,  simple  idea,  but  rather  many  ideas,  all  complex  and 
manifold. 

We  shall  best  discover  what  these  are  by  beginning  with 
the  Epistles.  In  them  there  are  five  main  types  of  thought, 
which  we  may  term,  after  the  authors  or  titles  of  the  several 
books,  the  Pauline,  the  Hebraic,  the  Jacobean,  the  Petrine, 
and  the  Apocalyptic.  These  all  have  this  in  common  : they 
are  attempts  to  construe  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus  Christ 
through  the  history,  literature,  religion,  and  people  of  Israel  ; 
but  they  differ  in  the  use  they  make  of  these  interpretative 
media,  and  the  relative  values  they  assign  to  them  and  to  Him. 
Paul  interprets  Jesus  through  the  Messianic  promise  and  the 
prophetic  ideal,  and  mainly  in  opposition  to  the  literalism  of 
the  rabbinical  schools  and  the  Pharisaic  law  ; Hebrews,  through 
the  idealized  religious  institutions  of  Israel,  especially  the 
priesthood  and  the  Temple ; James,  through  the  law  as  under- 
stood in  the  synagogue;  Peter,  through  prophecy  as  the  organ 
of  the  Messianic  hope;  the  Apocalypse,  through  the  people  of 
God,  His  elect,  though  hated  and  persecuted  of  man.  These 
all  witness  to  the  historical  reality  of  Jesus  Christ,  to  the  being 
of  communities  whose  life  is  derived  from  Him,  to  a common 


TYPES  OF  THOUGHT  IN  NEW  TESTAMENT. 


303 


belief  in  the  transcendence  of  His  person,  and  to  a common 
necessity  of  understanding  what  this  transcendence  means 
and  involves.  They  all  imply  that  His  history  is  known, 
and  that  their  readers  do  not  need  any  information  concern- 
ing it,  the  emphasis  laid  on  His  sinless  character,  death,  and 
resurrection  being  for  doctrinal  rather  than  mere  historical 
reasons.  Readers  and  writers  are  all  monotheists;  all  believe  in 
the  God  of  Israel,  the  reality  of  Israel’s  vocation,  the  authority 
of  his  sacred  literature,  in  the  Divine  origin  of  his  religion. 
Grant  all  these  things,  and  What  are  we  to  think  of  Jesus 
Christ  ? may  be  said  to  be  the  problem  common  to  them  all. 
The  very  fact  that  such  a problem  had  at  such  a stage  arisen, 
among  such  a people,  and  with  such  beliefs,  is  remarkable. 
What  it  signifies  we  may  best  discuss  after  we  have  reviewed 
the  various  interpretations. 

§ I. — The  Pauline  Christology. 

A.  Before  attempting  to  interpret  Paul’s  conception  of 
Christ,  several  things  necessary  to  a proper  historical  estimate 
of  him  and  his  theology  must  be  noted. 

1.  The  P^pistles  which  specially  concern  us  may  be  divided 
into  three  classes  : (a)  the  historical  and  polemical,  including 
Galatians,  Romans,  i and  2 Corinthians  ; (/8)  the  transitional, 
Philippians  ; (7)  the  Christological,  Ephesians  and  Colossians. 
I do  not  think  that  any  good  reason  for  the  denial  of  his 
authorship  of  any  of  these  has  been  made  out. 

2.  The  polemical  Epistles  are,  with  the  probable  exception 
of  the  Thessalonians,  our  oldest  authentic  Christian  literature. 
There  may  be  older  literary  material  in  the  Synoptics,  and 
even  in  the  Acts,  but  it  is  material  which  cannot  with  cer- 
tainty be  discovered  and  detached  from  its  context,  while 
the  books  in  which  it  is  embedded  are  all,  as  books,  later  than 
these  Epistles. 

3.  The  relation  as  regards  theology  of  all  these  Epistles 


304 


VARIETY  WITHIN  PAULINE  EPISTLES. 


may  be  stated  thus : In  material  principle  the  system  is 
throughout  the  same,  but  the  later  is  the  more  developed,  and 
is  stated  with  formal  differences  due  to  a different  antithesis 
and  purpose.  In  (a)  the  antithesis  is  Judaeo-Christian,  and 
so  the  argument  assumes  a more  limited  historical  form,  uses 
terms  and  establishes  positions  determined  not  simply  by  the 
thinker,  but  by  the  system  he  opposes.  In  (/S)  the  old  anti- 
thesis is  present  in  the  soteriology,^  but  the  Christology, 
which  rises  out  of  an  ethical  and  is  pervaded  by  a hortatory 
purpose,^  escapes  from  the  old  Juda^o-historical  terminology 
into  one  wider  and  more  general,  though  behind  lies  the 
memory  of  the  old  antagonisms.^  In  (7)  the  antithesis  is  a 
gnosis  which  has  both  Hellenic  and  Hellenistic  elements, 
requiring  a discussion  which  is  now  as  formally  cosmical  and 
ethical  as  in  (a)  it  had  been  historical  and  Judaeo-scholastic. 
We  may  say,  then,  that  what  these  Epistles  show  is  a de- 
veloping system,  reflecting  the  growth  of  a mind  alive  to  new 
problems  and  affected  by  changing  conditions. 

4.  Their  common  characteristic  is  an  interpretation  of 
Christ  of  so  comprehensive  a character  as  to  be  both  a philo- 
sophy of  man  and  history  and  a theology.  It  is,  as  it  were, 
the  universe,  its  cause,  course,  and  end  interpreted  in  the 
terms  of  Christ. 

5.  This  system  was  not  simply  formulated,  but  received 
literary  expression  less  than  a generation  after  His  death  at 
the  hands  of  a man  who  indeed  did  not  know  Him  “ accord- 

I ing  to  the  flesh,”  but  who  had  lived  in  the  city  where  He 
I died,  first  among  the  men  who  had  compassed  His  death,  and 
' then  among  the  men  who  had  known  and  followed  Him. 
Paul  came  through  Jesus  as  He  seemed  to  the  Jews  to  Jesus 
as  He  was  to  the  disciples,  and  it  was  while  face  to  face  with 
the  knowledge  he  had  from  both  sources  that  his  theology 
took  its  rise. 

6.  The  system  has  not  simply  an  interpretative  but  an 

’ Phil.  iii.  5-9.  2 phii^  ^ 3 [ 28-30. 


PAUL’S  PLACE  IN  THEOLOGY. 


305 


historical  significance.  One  or  two  of  His  sayings/  and  of  actual 
events,  His  descent  and  birth, “ His  institution  of  the  Supper,^ 
His  death,  ’ urial,  resurrection,"^  may  be  said  to  be  all  of  the 
history  these  Epistles  know.  But  to  represent  this  as  all  the 
knowledge  they  give  is  to  make  a superficial  truth  suggest 
a complete  falsehood.  They  are  wholly  filled  by  His  person- 
ality. Its  reality,  the  conditions  under  which  He  lived,  what 
He  did,  suffered,  seemed,  and  was,  are  so  woven  into  their 
very  texture  that  without  the  Gospels  we  could  not  make  even 
a show  of  interpreting  the  Pauline  Epistles.  And  what  does 
this  mean  but  that  the  history  is  the  very  groundwork  of  the 
Apostle’s  thought,  everywhere  assumed  in  it,  inseparable  from 
it,  the  element  in  which  it  lives,  moves,  and  has  its  being. 

7.  With  the  biographical  relations  and  psychological  roots 
of  the  Pauline  theology  we  have  here  no  concern,  but  simply 
with  its  doctrine  of  Christ.  Yet  it  may  not  be  irrelevant  to 
be  reminded  that  its  historical  worth  and  action  are  something 
quite  distinct  from  even  the  most  accurate  scientific  theory  as 
to  the  subjective  conditions  of  its  origin. 


In  the  Christology  we  have  two  questions, — one  theo- 
logical, concerned  with  the  conception  of  God  as  modified  by' 
the  doctrine  of  Christ  j another  soteriological,  concerned  with 
the  modes  and  forms  under  which  He  is  conceived  to  live  and 
act  in  time.  As  regards  the  former,  the  doctrine  of  all  the 
Epistles  is  identical ; as  regards  the  latter,  formal  differences 
emerge  that  will  necessitate  distinct  discussion. 

I.  The  Theology. — Schultz  says  : “ Paul  is  the  creator 
of  the  theological  doctrine  of  the  Godhead  of  Christ,  espe- 
cially of  the  doctrine  of  the  Christ  in  distinction  from  the 
doctrine  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ.”^  This  means  that  he  was 
the  first,  not  to  conceive  Jesus  as  Messiah,  but  to  conceive 

* I Cor.  vii.  10,  II,  ix.  14.  3 I coj.  xi.  23  ft. 

* Rom.  i.  3,  ix.  5 ; Gal  iii.  16,  iv.  4.  4 j ^v.  i-8. 

“ Die  Lehre  von  der  Gottheit  Cliristi,”  p.  395. 


20 


3o6 


THE  THEOLOGY  A CHRISTOLOGY. 


His  Messiahship  as  involving  His  divinity.  This  may  be 
true  so  far  as  the  dialectic  expression  of  the  idea  is  con- 
cerned, but  it  is  not  true  as  to  the  real  contents  of  the  idea. 
Jesus  Himself  effected  the  revolution  in  the  idea,  but  Paul 
elaborated  the  idea  so  revolutionized  into  a theology. 

The  constructive  thought  of  Paul  starts  with  the  historical 
person  of  Jesus,  and  his  primary  postulate  may  be  said  to  be 
its  truth  and  reality.  This  historical  Person  is  to  him  the  one 
and  only  Messiah.  In  the  Gospels  Jesus  is  a personal  but 
Christ  an  official  name,  and  the  two  are  never  interchanged  or 
confounded  ^ ; but  in  the  Pauline  Epistles  Christ  has  become 
as  personal  a name  as  Jesus  ^ — i.e.,  the  Person  so  constitutes 
the  office  and  the  office  is  so  incorporated  in  the  Person  that 
distinction  has  ceased  to  be  possible.  Jehovah  started  as  a 
denominative  and  became  an  appellative,  denoted  first  the 
God  of  Israel  in  distinction  from  other  gods  ; but  when  the 
monotheism  grew  absolute,  it  became,  as  it  were,  generic,  the 
•synonym  of  God;  Jehovah  could  be  used  only  of  God,  God 
only  of  Jehovah,  and  other  usage  in  either  case  was  impious 
or  idolatrous.  So  the  Christ  was  at  first  like  a predicate 
waiting  for  a subject  ; it  denoted  an  office  which  no  one  had 
as  yet  filled  ; but  by  the  time  Paul  began  to  write  the  office 
had  been  so  occupied  that  it  could  never  again  be  vacant : the 
personal  name,  Jesus,  had  become  official,  signified  the  Saviour; 
the  official  name,  Christ,  had  become  personal,  denoted  Jesus. 
But  this  inter-incorporation  of  the  Person  with  the  office  and 
of  the  office  with  the  Person  had  a twofold  effect — the  attri- 
butes of  the  office  became  those  of  the  Person,  the  qualities  of 
the  Person  were  conveyed  to  the  office.  The  rank,  the  place 
of  the  Messiah  in  prophecy  and  promise,  His  function  in 

1 This  distinction  gives  all  their  point  to  the  words  of  Peter,  Matt.  xvi. 
i6;  the  question  of  Jesus  to  the  scribes,  Matt.  xxii.  42  ; the  question  of 
the  high  priest,  xxvi.  63,  and  the  words  of  mockery,  68. 

2 Cf.  I Thess.  Ji.  6,  iii.  2,  iv.  16;  2 Thess.  iii.  5 ; Rom.  v.  6,  8,  vi.  4,  9, 
vii.  4,  viii.  9,  10,  ii,  ix.  3,  5,  xiv.  9,  15,  18,  xv.  3,  17,  18,  etc. 


THE  DIVINE  SONSHIP. 


307 


Israel  and  for  the  world,  were  seen  to  belong  to  Jesus  ; the  filial 
and  fraternal  spirit,  the  moral  qualities  and  acts,  the  passion 
and  death  of  Jesus  became  descriptive  of  the  Messiah.  The 
incorporation  of  the  office  in  the  Person  meant  that  its  history 
became  His  ; the  identification  of  the  Person  with  the  office 
meant  that  His  character  became  its. 

Now,  it  is  the  distinction  of  Paul  that  he  made  this  unity, 
with  all  it  involved,  articulate,  and  it  is  also  characteristic  that 
the  determinative  idea  in  the  system  which  he  elaborated  with 
so  much  dialectical  passion  came  from  the  personality  of  Jesus 
and  not  from  the  Messianic  office.  That  idea  was  His  filial 
relation.  His  Divine  Sonship.  What  was  to  him  the  primary 
fact  in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  became  the  constitutive 
factor  of  his  own  thought.  By  the  revelation  of  the  Son  in 
him  he  was  made  a Christian  and  an  Apostle.^  His  Gospel 
concerned  the  Son  of  God,^  who  is  God’s  own  Son,^  His 
beloved,^  the  Son- of  His  love.^  This  Sonship  did  not  begin 
with  His  historical  existence,  but  preceded  and  even  deter- 
mined it.  God  sends  forth  His  Son,  who  exists  before  He  can 
be  sent  forth, ^ and  comes  that  He  may  create  in  man  the 
spirit  of  the  sonship  He  Himself  has  by  nature.'^  Pie, 
though  rich,  yet  for  our  sakes  becomes  poor.®  He  comes  out 
of  heaven,  descends  from  above  that  He  may  ascend  with 
man  redeemed.^  Hence  there  follows  a twofold  conse- 
quence, the  one  affecting  the  Son,  the  other  the  Father. 
As  to  the  Son  a place  and  an  eminence  are  ascribed  to 
Him  that  involve  Divine  rank  and  honour.  In  contrast 
to  the  multitudinous  deities  and  lords  of  heathendom  Paul 
places  the  one  God  and  the  one  Lord,  and  then  co- 
ordinates while  distinguishing  the  two  thus  : “ All  things 

’ Gal.  i.  15,  16.  ^ Col.  i.  13. 

2 Rom.  i.  3.  ® Gal.  iv.  4 ; Rom.  viii.  3. 

3 Rom.  viii.  3,  32 ; Gal.  iv.  4.  ^ Gal.  iv.  5 ; Rom.  viii.  9,  14-17. 

* Eph.  i.  6.  ® 2 Cor.  viii.  9. 

® I Cor.  XV.  47  ; Rom.  x.  6,  8;  Eph.  iv.  10. 


IN  THE  GODHEAD  HE  FINDS  ROOM 


308 

are  from  the  Father  and  we  unto  Him  ; all  things  are  through 
the  Son  and  we  through  Him.”  ^ The  Father  is  the  one  and 
universal  source  and  end  ; the  Son  is  the  one  and  universal 
medium  and  actualizing  cause.  As  such  He  is  Lord  of  all, 
“ both  of  the  dead  and  the  living,”  ^ and  the  confession  of  this 
absolute  sovereignty  marks  the  Christian.^  And  what  this 
means  is  made  explicit  in  a most  emphatic  way  : Old  Testa- 
ment texts  that  refer  to  Jehovah  are  applied  to  Christ,^  and 
He  is  made  the  ultimate  standard  and  end  of  action. 
Whether  we  live  or  die  it  is  unto  Him.^  And  so  it  need 
not  in  any  way  surprise  us  that  Paul  speaks  of  the  Son  as 
“ He  who  is  over  all,  God  blessed  for  ever.”  ® The  doxo- 
logy  was  the  natural  language  of  such  a faith. 

And  this  faith  he  more  fully  develops  in  a passage  marked 

^ I Cor.  viii.  5,  6. 

* Rom.  X.  12,  xiv.  9. 

® Piiil.  ii.  II  ; I Cor.  xii.  3 : cf.  i Cor.  i.  9 ; Rom,  i.  4,  v.  21. 

* Rom.  X.  13,  cf.  Joel  iii.  10;  i Cor.  ii.  16,  x.  22,  cf.  Deut.  xxxii.  21. 

^ Rom.  xiv.  6-9,  cf.  4;  Phil.  i.  21. 

® Rom.  ix.  5.  This  is  a passage  where  the  grammar  admits  by  a change 
of  punctuation  and  emphasis  several  different  interpretations.  The  late 
Ezra  Abbot  (“Critical  Essays,”  xvi.)  enumerates  seven  possible  con- 
structions, all  grammatical,  and  each  representing  a distinct  phase  of  theo- 
logical doctrine.  But  his  classification  resolved  itself  into  two  main 
divisions  : (a)  where  6 ^v,  with  all  that  follows,  including  decs,  is  referred 
to  Christ ; and  (j3)  where  6 a>v  introduces  a new  sentence  and  deos  denotes 
God,  the  Father,  (a)  may  be  termed  the  Christological,  (/3)  the  doxological 
interpretation.  Where  grammar  is  so  little  decisive  we  must  be  guided  by 
exegesis ; and  it  seems  to  me  as  if  the  Apostle's  argument  has  its  natural 
culmination  in  the  Christology,  while  the  doxology  would  be  a most  un- 
Pauline  ending  to  a catalogue  of  Jewish  privileges.  Kara  aapKa  is  one 
side  of  the  very  antithesis  with  which  the  Epistle  opens  (i.  3),  and  has  no 
meaning  without  its  other  member.  Were  there  no  theological  considera- 
tions in  the  case,  6 p^pio-roy  would  be  naturally  taken  as  the  antecedent  of 
6 oju;  and  this  appears  also  as  the  connection  which  the  argument  requires. 
And  if  Christ  can  be  said  to  be  6 ini  ndvreov,  then  it  is  a violent  bit  of 
exegesis  to  erect  the  last  clause  into  a sentence  with  a new  subject.  For 
the  rest,  Beds  is  here  taken  as  predicative,  not  as  denominative,  and  is  in 
this  sense  entirely  suitable  both  to  the  special  argument  and  to  the  general 
theology,  ©eds  is  the  natural  predicate  of  one  6 (ov  eVi  nduToov.  And  this 
is  but  a paraphrase  of  passages  already  considered. 


FOR  BOTPI  FATHER  AND  SON. 


309 


by  epic  fulness  and  dignity.^  In  order  to  see  its  meaning  we 
must  seize  its  argument.  It  starts  from  the  historical  “ Christ 
Jesus.”  His  reality  is  assumied,  and  a common  conception  of 
His  person.  If  the  readers  did  not  agree  with  the  writer  in 
both  these  respects,  his  argument  would  lose  all  validity.  He 
is  not  labouring  the  proof  of  a dogmatic  position,  but  is  using 
a common  belief  to  enforce  a neglected  duty.  He  speaks  then 
of  the  “Christ  Jesus”  they  knew,  who  had  been  “found  in 
fashion  as  a man,”  and  was  “ obedient  unto  death.”  He  is 
the  supreme  example  of  sacrifice  in  order  to  service,  of  the 
surrender  of  all  that  a self  might  hold  dear  in  order  to  the 
saving  of  man.  Why?  Because,  although  in  the  form  of 
God,  He  did  not  think  the  being  equal  with  God  a thing 
to  be  clutched  at,  but  emptied  Himself  for  our  good.  Prior 
being  is  here  affirmed,  a being  so  in  the  form  of  God  that 
to  be  equal  with  Him  is  a thing  of  nature,  a being,  too 
possessed  of  thought  and  will ; and  a will  not  bound  like 
man’s  to  obedience  to  a higher,  but  with  the  power  and  right 
to  be  a law  unto  itself,  the  quality  of  the  will  which  is  law 
being  evident  in  the  beneficence  of  the  deed.  It  is  when  His 
prior  dignity  is  considered  that  His  voluntary  humiliation, 
obedience,  and  death  appear  so  wonderful,  and  His  later 
exaltation  so  entirely  natural  and  fit.  But  so  to  construe 
Christ  is  to  modify  the  whole  conception  of  God.  Abstract 
monotheism  ceases,  and  is  replaced  by  a theism  which  finds 
within  the  one  Godhead  room  for  both  Father  and  Son. 
It  is  the  characteristic  of  the  Pauline  theology  that  it  is  a 
theology  of  the  Fatherhood  which  is  through  the  Sonship. 
Neither  can  be  without  the  other  ; both  must  be  together, 
or  neither  can  be  at  all.  The  ideas  exist  in  what  we  may 
term  a spontaneous  rather  than  an  explicated  and  formulated 
unity,  but  they  exist  and  are  co-ordinated.^  The  divinity 
of  both  Father  and  Son  was  affirmed  ; later  thought  must 

^ Phil.  ii.  6-1 1 ; Meyer,  in  loc. 

* Gal.  i.  I ; i Cor.  i.  3 ; Roin.  i.  7 ; 2 Cor.  i.  2. 


310 


THE  EARLIER  SOTERIOLOGY. 


determine  how  their  unity  could  be  conceived  and  expressed. 
The  great  thing  gained  was,  Fatherhood  and  Sonship  were 
as  immanent  essential  to  Deity. 

II.  The  Soteriology. — But,  now,  how  did  Paul  bring  his 
theological  idea  into  relation  with  reality  ? As  the  filial  idea 
which  he  owed  to  the  Person  penetrated,  pervaded,  and 
modified  his  doctrine  of  God,  so  the  historical  and  soterio- 
logical  idea  which  he  owed  to  the  Messianic  office  affected 
his  notion  of  man,  past  and  present,  individual  and  collective. 
By  investing  the  Divine  Son  with  all  the  attributes  and 
functions  of  the  Christ  he  brought  God  and  man  into 
relation  ; made  God  fill  and  govern  all  history,  and  history 
become  the  slow  unfolding  of  His  purpose  ; made  man  as 
a race  appear  as  an  organism  or  unity  over  against  the  one 
God,  while  man  as  an  individual  appeared  in  His  sight  as 
a being  of  peculiar  value  and  an  object  of  peculiar  regard. 
It  was  under  this  aspect  that  the  theology  became  a philo- 
sophy of  history  as  well  as  a doctrine  of  redemption,  and  the 
differences  between  the  earlier  and  later  Paulinism  emerged. 

I.  The  system  of  the  earlier  Epistles. — This  system  is  governed 
as  to  form  by  its  double  antithesis — Judaism  and  Judaic 
Christianity.  He  has  the  history,  persons,  institutions,  terms, 
of  the  Old  Testament  ever  before  him,  but  only  that  he 
may  reverse  the  process  of  the  Judaizers  ; read  Christ  into  the 
Old  Testament  instead  of  the  Old  Testament  into  Christ.  On 
this  the  whole  future  of  Christianity  depended.  Had  they 
succeeded,  the  new  religion  would  have  died  into  the  old,  but 
by  his  success  the  new  escaped  from  the  old,  and  lived. 

i.  In  Paul  the  Christology  is,  as  it  were,  the  synthesis  of 
the  theology  and  the  anthropology  ; or,  in  other  words,  his 
conception  of  Christ  stands  organically  connected  with  his 
conception  of  God  on  the  one  hand  and  of  man  on  the  other. 
One  side  of  this  relation  we  have  seen : Christ  is  God’s 
Son,  existing  in  the  form  of  God,  Divine  in  name  and  dignity. 
But  on  the  other  side  He  is  connected  with  man,  born  of  a 


THE  TWO  HEADS  AND  THE  TWO  RACES. 


woman/  of  the  seed  of  David/  and  the  stock  of  Abraham.^ 
He  is  thus  twofold  in  origin  and  nature.  According  to  the 
flesh,  He  is  of  man,  and  especially  Israel  ^ ; according  to 
the  spirit.  He  is  of  God.^  On  this  ground  and  for  this  reason 
He  occupies  a unique  position  ; like  the  first  man.  He  is  a new 
creation,  and  like  him  the  common  source  or  parent  of  a race; 
but  in  every  other  respect  they  stand  as  direct  and  absolute 
contrasts.  The  first  man  was  natural,  but  the  second  is 
spiritual  : the  one  was  of  the  earth,  made  from  the  dust  of  the 
ground ; but  the  other  is  “ out  of  heaven,”  as  it  were  a pure 
creation  of  God.  And  so  Adam  was  only  a “ living  soul,”  a 
being  who  lived  and  moved  within  the  terms  of  sensuous 
nature;  but  Christ  was  a “quickening  Spirit,”  a Being  above 
nature,  who  had  life  and  was  capable  of  giving  it.®  And  as 
were  the  parents  such  were  their  posterities, — Adam’s  of  the 
earth,  and  sensuous  ; Christ’s  of  heaven,  and  spiritual.  These 
two,  and  they  only,  are  therefore  universal  persons,  and  their 
acts  correspond  alike  as  regards  quality  and  universality  to 
their  persons.  By  Adam,  the  natural  or  sensuous  man,  sin 
enters  into  the  world,  and  death  by  sin  ; by  Christ,  the 
heavenly  and  spiritual  man,  righteousness  comes,  and  life  by 
righteousness.'^  Hence  they  stand  for  races,  species,  kinds  : to 
be  in  Adam  is  to  be  sinful,  under  the  reign  of  death  ; but  to  be 
in  Christ  is  to  be  righteous,  under  the  reign  of  grace  and  life.® 
Each  contains  a race,  and  is,  in  a sense,  the  race  he  contains. 

Hence  what  comes  to  be  in  each  comes  to  be  for  all.^  In 
Adam  the  race  lives  its  natural  life,  sins,  and  dies  ; in  Christ 
the  race  by  obedience  unto  death,  by  suffering  unto  sacrifice, 
is  made  capable  of  escaping  from  the  natural,  of  being  purged 
from  sin,  of  attaining  the  spiritual,  of  being  reconciled  to  God.^® 
In  the  distribution  of  their  acts  there  is  thus  a difference  which 


^ Gal.  iv.  4. 

^ Kom.  i.  2. 

^ Gal.  iii.  16. 
^ Kom.  ix.  5. 


® I Cor.  XV.  45-47 
^ Rom.  V.  12-14. 

* Rom.  V.  19-21. 

® I Cor.  XV.  2, 


® Rom.  i.  3-5,  viii.  3. 


2 Cor.  V.  15-19. 


312 


SIN  GUILTLESS  AND  GUILTY. 


springs  from  the  quality  and  character  alike  of  the  acts  and 
the  actors.  The  act  of  Adam  is  a transgression,  but  what  it 
creates  is  a state  rather  than  an  act.  This  state,  which  is 
named  afiaprla,  is  distinguished  on  the  one  hand  from  irapd- 
/3aaL<;,  which  is  the  transgression  of  a positive  law,  and  on  the 
other  from  irapdirTwpia,  which  is  an  act  that  involves  guilt.^ 
Adam  creates  no  man  save  himself  a transgressor  or  offender, 
though  he  creates  all  men  sinners  ; and  while  Christ  may 
be  made  sin  for  us,^  He  cannot  be  made  transgression  or 
offence.  The  act  of  Adam,  then,  creates  for  man  a state 
of  privation,  loss,  evil,  which  are  all  summed  up  in  the  term 

1 These  terms  Paul  used  in  very  distinctive  senses,  and  always  with  care- 
ful discrimination.  'A^apria  occurs  one  hundred  and  seventy-four  times  in 
the  New  Testament,  seventy-one  instances  being  in  Paul.  napuTfrcopa 
twenty-one  times  in  the  New  Testament,  sixteen  of  them  being  in  Paul. 
Uapd^aais  five  times  in  Paul  and  twice  in  Hebrews.  Of  the  two  latter 
napanrcopa  is  the  more  general,  denotes  offence  against  any  law,  natural  or 
revealed  ; Trapd^aais  the  more  special,  denotes  violation  of  a positive  law, 
an  express  precept  with  its  express  sanction,  napanrcopa  is  nearer  dpaprla 
than  Trapd^aais.  Rom.  iv.  25  and  i Cor.  xv.  3 are  examples  of  coincidence  ; 
but  even  here  the  distinction  emerges.  'Apapria  could  have  been  used  in  the 
singular,  but  not  Trapdirroopa.  There  is  such  a thing  as  collective  dpaprla, 
but  Trapanrdipara  are  individual,  and  save  as  single  acts  cannot  be.  Sin 
reigns,  plays  the  lord,  holds  in  bondage,  has  a sort  of  distinct  being  of  its 
own,  and  is  even  independent  of  action,  though  action  is  not  independent 
of  it.  But  rrapaTTroapara  have  no  being  save  through  choices  or  as  acts  of 
will.  So,  too,  with  napd^aai^.  Man  may  be  a sinner  without  being  a 
transgressor,  but  he  cannot  transgress  without  sinning.  Adam’s  act  could 
be  alternatively  described  as  dpaprla,  irapd^ao-is,  OTirapdirroopa,  but  the  con- 
sequence to  his  posterity  could  be  expressed  by  dpaprla,  but  not  by  either 
of  the  other  terms.  We  may  express  the  distinction  by  saying  that  to  Paul 
those  terms  did,  but  dpaprla  did  not,  denote  the  idea  of  culpability  or  guilt. 
Hence  the  fine  distinction  of  phrase,  Christ  Trapedddr)  did  rd  Traparrrdipara 
r]pcdv  (Rom.  iv.  25),  but  rbv  pfj  yvdvra  dpaprlav  vnep  r]pdiv  dpaprlav  eTrolr]cr€v 
(2  Cor.  V.  2 1 ).  He  could  be  delivered  for  offences,  but  not  made  an  offender ; 
He  could  be  made  sin  without  becoming  a sinner.  Paul  did  not  mean  to 
suggest  any  idea  as  to  the  transfer  of  culpability  or  guilt.  He  would  have 
been  greatly  shocked  if  he  had  imagined  it  possible  that  any  one  could  take 
his  phrase  as  equivalent  to  7rapa7rrco/xa  or  napd^aaiv  eirohja-fv.  Nothing  could 
have  been  more  abhorrent  to  his  mind  than  the  idea  of  the  guiltless  made 
guilty. 

^ 2 Cor.  V.  21. 


RIGPITEOUSNESS  WITHOUT  WORKS. 


313 


“death”;  but  he  does  not  create  one  of  guilt.  And  out 
of  this  state  man  can  be  redeemed,  but  only  by  an  act 
similar  in  kind,  but  opposite  in  quality,  to  the  one  which  in- 
volved him  in  it.^  The  one  was  an  act  of  transgression,  the 
other  must  be  an  act  of  obedience.  And  this  act  Christ,  by 
virtue  of  His  place  and  nature,  office  and  function  as  the  Second 
Adam,  performs,  and  alone  could  perform.  And  His  act  be- 
comes as  to  man  a righteousness,  which,  like  the  sin  that  comes 
through  Adam,  is  a state  rather  than  an  act,  and  can,  relative 
to  its  opposite,  be  described  as  a state  of  salvation,  or  deliver- 
ance, or  title  to  privilege  and  to  life.^  By  natural  birth  or 
descent  from  Adam  we  inherit  the  djiapTia,  are  born  into  the 
state  it  denotes;- by  faith,  which  is  the  condition  of  the  spiritual 
birth  that  introduces  into  the  family  or  race  of  Christ,  we 
become  possessed  of  the  hucaioavvr],  pass  into  the  state  it 
describes.^  The  conduct  which  becomes  the  state  of  sin  is 
transgression,  but  the  conduct  which  becomes  the  state  of 
righteousness  is  obedience.  The  community  which  realizes  the 
one  is  man  Kara  adpKa,  bearing  the  image  of  the  earthly ; the 
community  which  realizes  the  other  is  man  icard  irved/ia,  made 
in  the  image  of  the  heavenly.  The  head  of  the  one  is  Adam  ; 
the  head  of  the  other  is  Christ.  We  name  Adam’s  society  the 
world,  but  Christ’s  the  Church.^ 

^ Rom.  V.  15.  * Rom.  v.  16-21, 

^ Rom.  i.  17,  iii.  21,  22,  v.  i ; Phil.  iii.  9. 

■*  In  order  to  a clear  apprehension  of  the  Pauline  theology  we  must  never 
lose  sight  of  his  great  antitheses.  It  is  impossible  to  represent  these  here 
in  all  their  range  of  significance  and  relation,  but  certain  main  features 
ought  to  be  recalled.  There  is  an  antithesis — 

(1)  Of  Persons,  Adam  and  Christ. 

(2)  Of  their  acts — d/xaprta  and  diKaioavur} : sin  and  righteousness. 

(3)  Of  their  consequences — Oavaros  and  : death  and  life. 

(4)  Of  the  process  of  realization — KaraKpiixa  and  diKalcoiJia  : condemnation 
and  justification. 

(5)  Of  the  conditions  of  the  process — napa^aai^  or  TrapanreofMa,  changing 
sin  into  guilt,  and  ■klo-tis,  or  the  faith  which  unites  the  soul  to  the  righteous- 
ness which  is  life. 

(6)  Of  the  man  in  whom  the  process  is  realized,  or  the  trdp^  as  the  seat 


314 


PAUL’S  PHILOSOPHY  OF  PHSTORY. 


ii.  But  Paul  docs  not  allow  his  doctrine  to  remain  simply 
abstract,  at  most  personalized  in  Adam  and  Christ ; he  boldly 
works  it  into  what  we  have  called  a philosophy  of  history — 
a theory  of  the  laws  or  forces  that  have  governed  the 
development  of  man,  individual  and  collective.  For  these 
two  are  incapable  of  separation  ; the  whole  is  realized  by  the 
individuals  composing  it ; the  individuals  are  what  they  are 
through  the  whole.  And  here  the  correlation  of  the  universal 
or  fontal  persons  and  their  respective  derivative  races  assumes 
a new  meaning.  Each  fontal  person  is  an  epitome  of  his  race; 
each  race  is  an  expansion  of  its  creative  person.  And  in  each 
case  the  person  and  the  race  exhibit  in  a similar  manner, 
though  on  an  absolutely  different  scale,  the  operation  of  the 
laws  that  first  in  the  region  of  sense,  then  in  the  region  of  the 
spirit,  regulate  the  process  and  the  stages  of  the  racial  develop- 
ment. Adam  is  man  Kara  adpKa,  Christ  is  man  /card  Trveufjba  ; 
viewed  apart,  they  typify  the  dualism  within  the  organic  unity, 
the  war  of  the  flesh  against  the  spirit,  of  the  spirit  against  the 

of  sin,  and  the  nvevixa  as  the  seat  of  righteousness,  or  the  avOpcorros  aapKiKos 
and  the  avdpeoTros  TrvevpaTinos  ’ or  the  e^co  and  the  ecro)  dvdpwuos. 

(7)  Of  the  method  by  which  sin  and  righteousness  are  respectively 
revealed,  or  the  vopos  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  kirayyikia  or  the  evayyeXcoy 
on  the  other,  or  Law  and  Gospel.  The  law  makes  the  sinner  virodcKos  rto 
A(S  ; but  by  the  Gospel  he  attains  the  hiKaioavvp  dia  ttIo-tccos,  or  he  is 
6 diKaios  eK  TrtVreco?. 

(8)  Of  the  requirements  which  these  two  respectively  make,  epya  and 
TTiaTis,  or  works  and  faith. 

(9)  Of  the  state  which  they  respectively  create — SovXeta  and  iXcvdepla  or 
vlodeaia,  or  bondage  and  freedom  or  sonship. 

(10)  Of  the  character  and  conduct — irapaKo^  and  inraKo^,  or  disobedience 
and  obedience. 

(11)  Of  the  societies — Koapos  and  eKKXrjala,  or  the  world  and  the  Church. 

(12)  Of  the  ultimate  sources  or  causes  of  all  their  respective  results — 
apapTia  on  the  one  hand,  and  x^P'-^  simply  deos  on  the  other. 

But  it  would  be  a mistake  to  conclude  that,  because  Paul  so  strongly 
emphasizes  these  antitheses,  there  is  no  unity  in  his  conception  of  man  and 
history.  There  is  the  strongest  possible  unity,  but  it  is  realized  under  the 
conditions  of  conflict,  yet  a conflict  which  leaves  God  and  His  grace 
victorious  and  supreme. 


THE  RACE  EPITOMIZED  IN  ITS  HEADS. 


315 


flesh  ; taken  together,  they  typify  the  unity  within  the  dualism, 
the  natural  which  precedes  the  spiritual,  the  spiritual  which 
succeeds,  supersedes,  and  perfdets  the  natural.  But  as  the 
races  interpenetrate,  as  all,  like  Christ  Himself,  must  be  of 
the  natural  before  they  can  be  of  the  spiritual,  it  follows 
that  in  all  the  race  of  Adam  there  is  something  of  Christ, 
in  all  the  race  of  Christ  something  of  Adam.  We  may  repre- 
sent this  by  saying  that  Paul  conceives  the  acts  and  states 
personalized  in  Adam  and  Christ  as  forces  active  alike  in 
the  race  and  in  all  its  members.  Sin  reigns,^  exercises 
dominion,^  has  a law  which  it  enforces  both  within  and  against 
the  man  and  in  opposition  to  the  law  of  God.^  It  operates 
within  the  race  as  an  un  divine  and  a contra-divine  power,  hides 
God  from  man,  darkens  his  mind,  blinds  him  to  the  truth, 
tempts  him  to  idolatry,  so  degrades  and  materializes  his 
religious  ideas  that  he  changes  “ the  glory  of  the  incorruptible 
God  into  the  likeness  of  corruptible  man,  and  birds,  and  four- 
footed  beasts,  and  creeping  things.” Once  God  is  expelled 
from  man,  falsehood  and  lust  and  all  basest  passions  take  pos- 
session of  him,  and  he  becomes  the  slave  of  the  sin  whose  end 
and  whose  wage  is  death.®  But  the  God  who  made  man  in 
Christ,  building,  as  it  were,  the  race  after  Him  and  Him  into 
the  race,  cannot  allow  this  reign  of  sin  to  become  absolute;  and 
so  He  acts  against  it  according  to  a purpose  as  old  as  Himself, 
which  His  foreknowledge  guides  and  His  foreordination  fulfils. 
The  realization  of  this  purpose  is  gradual,  and  proeeeds  on  a 
twofold  line — the  natural  or  immanent,  and  the  supernatural  or 
transcendent.  The  immanent  is  a personal  yet  universal  law 
within  man,  whieh  teaches  him  at  once  the  knowledge  of  God 
and  his  duties  to  Him.  Every  man  has  this  knowledge.  God 
so  works  in  nature,  and  nature  so  manifests  God,  that  reason 
can  discover  through  its  visible  things  His  invisible.  His 

* Rom  V.  21,  vi.  12.  ^ Rom.  vii.  22-25,  '^iii*  2. 

• * Rom.  vi.  14.  * Rom.  i.  18-32. 

® Rom.  vi.  20-23. 


THE  REIGN  OF  GOD. 


316 

eternal  power  and  divinity.'  The  reason,  therefore,  is  every- 
where on  the  side  of  God  and  against  sin.  But  the  reason 
does  not  stand  alone  ; there  is  conscience  also.  In  the  heart 
of  man  the  law  is  written.  Men  judge  themselves  and  judge 
their  neighbours  ; these  judgments  imply  a standard  of  right 
and  a knowledge  of  duty,  a law  known  to  all  and  binding  all. 
Sin,  therefore,  holds  nowhere  undisputed  sway ; in  every 
conscience  there  is  such  a witness  of  God  as  leaves  the  sinner 
without  excuse.^ 

But  the  immanent  could  not  live  without  the  transcendent, 
and  this  is  represented  by  the  constant  action  of  God  with  a 
view  to  the  realization  of  His  purpose— the  coming  of  the 
Christ  who  is  necessary  to  the  completion  of  the  race.  This 
cannot  be  done  all  at  once  ; man  must  be  prepared  for  it. 
The  preparation  begins  with  a promise  : man  is  to  be  saved  ; 
God  is  to  save  him.  The  promise  is  made  to  a person — ■ 
Abraham — who  believes  it,  and  his  faith  is  counted  to  him  for 
righteousness.^  But  man  is  as  yet  too  sensuous  and  infirm  a 
creature  to  be  saved  by  so  gracious  and  gentle  a thing  as  the 
promise.  He  still  sins,  and  the  law  is  added  because  of  trans- 
gressions' This  law  comes  in  not  to  annul  the  promise,  but  to 
help  towards  its  fulfilment,  and  is  therefore  occasional,  pro- 
visional, transitional.®  It  has  many  functions,  some  of  them 
most  dissimilar  and  diverse,  yet  all  of  them  necessary.  It  is  as 
an  institution  disciplinary,  intended  to  restrain  men  from  sin- 
ning®; educational,  tutorial — on  the  one  hand  it  is  the  “paeda- 
gogus  ” or  schoolmaster  of  sons  who  are  still  pupils,'^  and  on  the 
other,  the  “ rudiments  ” by  means  of  which  they  are  educated 
and  drilled  ® ; religious,  emphasizing  the  reign  of  God  and  the 
duty  of  obedience®;  symbolical,  showing  what  was  necessary 


^ Rom.  i.  19,  20 : cf.  Acts  xiv.  15-17,  xvii.  27, 
^ Rom.  ii.  1 5. 

3 Gal.  iii.  16  ; Rom.  iv.  9 If. 

* Gal.  iii.  19. 


* Gal.  iii.  23. 

® Gal.  iii.  10. 

^ Gal.  iii.  24,  iv.  i,  2. 
® Gal.  iv.  3,  4. 


® Rom.  vii.  7. 


THE  ELECTION  OF  GRACE. 


317 


to  the  recovery  of  man,  impossible  to  him,  possible  only 
through  God.^  But  in  order  to  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise — 
Le.,  the  coming  of  Christ — and  to  the  existence  of  the  law,  a 
people  was  necessary  ; and  as  these  were  both  from  God,  the 
result  of  His  free  and  transcendental  action,  so  the  people  must 
also  be  His  creation.  He  proceeds  by  the  principle  of  election, 
selects  Abraham,  the  man  who  had  believed  His  promise,  to  be 
“ the  father  of  the  faithful,”  and  of  his  sons  Isaac,  of  his  sons 
Jacob,  and  of  Jacob’s  sons  He  constitutes  a state,  giving  to 
them  the  institutions  which  were  necessary  to  maintain  their 
separate  being.^  They  are  as  His  adopted  sons,  and  have  the 
visible  presence,  the  covenants,  the  law,  the  service  of  God,  and 
the  promises^;  they  are  His  organ,  entrusted  with  His  oracles  ^ ; 
and  of  them,  “ as  concerning  the  flesh,”  Christ  is  to  come. 
But  they  were  not  equal  to  the  honour  they  had  to  bear ; 
they  took  themselves  and  their  institutions  for  ends  rather  than 
means,  and  in  the  name  of  the  law  “ crucified  the  Lord  of 
glory.” ° But  by  this  very  act  their  law  and  their  own  being  were 
ended  for  a law  which  could  do  nothing  better  with  the  Holy 
and  Just  than  crucify  Him,  was  by  an  act  of  so  transcendent 
wrong  condemned  and  abolished  ; and  a people  who  had  so 
failed  to  fulfil  its  mission  as  to  make  a victim  of  the  Promised 
Lord,  had  most  surely  set  themselves  against  the  counsel  and 
purpose  of  Godd  So  by  one  and  the  same  act  the  old  local 
and  provisional  order  which  had  done  its  preparatory  work 
was  ended,  and  the  new  universal  and  permanent  order, 
whose  work  was  never  to  end,  was  instituted. 

2.  The  later  system. — In  the  polemical  Epistles  the  anti- 
theses determine  the  province  as  well  as  the  terms  of  the 
discussion  ; and  while  the  principles  look  out  into  universal 
history,  the  argument  moves  within  the  lines  drawn  by 

^ Rom.  viii.  3,  4 ; Gal.  iii.  21,  22. 

* Rom.  ix.  6-18. 

2 Rom.  ix.  4. 


^ Rom.  X.  3,  4,  xi.  I ff. 


^ Rom.  iii.  2. 
* I Cor.  ii.  8. 
® Gal.  iii.  13. 


3i8  the  later  christology  the  larger. 

Judaism.  In  the  Christological  Epistles  these  antitheses  are 
transcended  ; thought  is,  alike  as  regards  form  and  matter, 
universal.  Christ  occupies  not  simply  an  historical,  but  a 
cosmical  place ; He  is  the  idea  or  principle  constitutive 
and  interpretative  of  the  All.  In  Him,  by  Him,  and 
unto  Him  all  things  are  created.^  He  is  the  vital  bond 
of  uncreated  and  created  being ; in  Him  all  things  are 
constituted,  and  in  Him  all  are  re-constituted.^  As  the  image 
of  the  invisible  God  ^ He  stands  in  a double  relation, — one 
essential,  to  God,  whose  image  He  is  ; another  formal,  to  man, 
who  sees  the  image  that  he  may  know  God.  In  Him  dwells 
all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily,'^  and  out  of  this  ful- 
ness He  communicates  alike  in  creation  and  redemption.^ 
And  the  cosmos  He  creates  and  governs  is  not  limited  to 
the  Nature  we  know  ; it  is  as  wide  as  being,  comprehends 
the  heavenly  and  the  earthly,  the  visible  and  the  invisible, 
all  dignities  and  all  dominions.®  Men  are  created  and  are 
elect  in  Him,’  but  through  Him  the  highest  principalities 
and  powers  discover  “ the  manifold  wisdom  of  God.”  ® His 
significance  is  absolute ; what  He  does  on  earth  and  in  time. 
He  does  for  the  universe  and  eternity.  His  kingdom  is 
God’s,®  and  His  name  is  exalted  above  every  name,  both  in 
this  world  and  in  the  world  to  come.^® 

But  these  universal  acts  become  the  basis  and  regulative 
principle  of  particular  relations  and  acts.  The  Creator  is 
so  bound  to  His  creation  that  He  cannot  allow  it  to  be 
divided  from  Him  by  evil,  for  this  would  be  its  ruin. 
And  so  at  the  touch  of  evil  the  cosmology  becomes  a 
soteriology  ; for  when  sin  enters  the  world,  the  Creator,  who  is 
good,  has  no  choice  but  to  become  the  Saviour.  Hence  there 


^ Col.  i.  15,  16. 

* Col.  i.  17  ; Eph  i.  10. 
® Col.  i.  15. 

^ Col.  ii.  9,  i.  19. 

® Eph.  i.  23,  ii.  19, 


® Col.  i.  16,  ii.  II ; Eph.  iv.  10. 

Eph.  i.  4. 

® Eph.  iii.  10. 

® Eph.  V.  5. 

Eph.  i.  21. 


THE  INCARNATION  IN  TIME  YET  ETERNAL.  319 

emerges,  alike  as  regards  evil  and  redemption,  a significant 
formal  difference  between  the  polemical  and  Christological 
Epistles.  Evil  has  as  great  a place  as  ever  ; it  is  a thing 
of  nature,  opposed  to  God,  deadly  to  man.^  Yet  before  it 
becomes  immanent  in  man  it  has  a being  outside  and  above 
him,  exists,  as  it  were,  with  an  organized  kingdom  and 
king  of  its  own,  whose  spirit,  the  counterfeit  of  the  Spirit 
of  God,  works  in  the  sons  of  disobedience."'^  The  old 
antithesis  of  Adam  and  Christ  is  not  denied,  but  it  has 
disappeared,  or  been  sublimed  into  a higher — the  Son  and 
the  prince  of  the  power  of  the  air,  the  kingdom  of  light  and 
of  darkness.^  The  categories  of  time  and  history  have 
thus  ceased  to  be  here  applieable  ; sin  is  no  longer  an  affair 
of  man  or  earth,  but  of  the  universe.  The  conflict  against 
it  is  extra-temporal ; its  field  is  the  whole  realm  of  mental 
being,  the  protagonists  God  and  the  devil.  The  soteriology 
is  as  the  cosmology  ; the  arena  and  the  range  of  the  creative 
and  the  redemptive  energies  are  eoincident  and  coextensive  ; 
in  other  words,  what  had  been  earlier  conceived  as  a question 
of  God  and  man  is  now  conceived  as  a question  of  God 
and  the  universe.  We  may  represent  the  change  by  saying 
that  as  before  all  had  been  historical  in  form,  now  all  was 
cosmical  ; yet  all  is  so  conceived  as  to  compel  sin  to  testify 
to  the  wonderful  continuity  of  the  Divine  action.  Thus 
salvation  is  the  Son’s  work,  just  as  creation  had  been.^  This 
work,  while  universal  in  its  purpose  and  results,  is  local  in 
its  scene.  The  Incarnation  appears  an  event  in  time,  but 
was  the  fulfilment  of  an  eternal  purpose,  and  so  had  been 
from  eternity  before  the  mind  of  God  as  an  idea,  and  to 
Him  idea  is  the  same  as  reality.  The  event  in  time  was 
for  us,  not  for  Him  ; and  so  while  outwardly  accomplished  on 
earth,  it  was  yet  so  above  time  that  on  account  of  it  and  by 

• Col.  1.  21  ; P^ph.  ii.  I.  ^ i.  13,  ii.  15  ; Eph.  iv.  26,  vi.  ii, 

* Eph.  ii.  2,  vi.  12.  * Col.  i.  20,  ii.  14,  15. 


320 


I'AUL  AND  HEBREWS  COMPARED. 


it  as  means  Christ  subdues  all  things  unto  Himself.^  In 
the  body  of  His  flesh  by  death,  by  means  of  His  cross, 
He  reconciles  the  men  who  had  been  alienated  from  the 
life  of  God,^  makes  them  new  men,  created  after  the  image 
of  God,  builds  them  into  a new  society,  becomes  the  Head 
of  the  society  He  builds,  communicates  to  it  His  life,  rules 
it  by  love,  fills  it  with  peace,  and  distinguishes  it  by  the 
great  unities  which  are  the  signs  of  His  presence  and 
victory  : “ One  Lord,  one  faith,  one  baptism,  one  God  and 
Father  of  all,  who  is  above  all,  and  through  all,  and  in  all.”^ 


§ 11. — The  Christology  of  Hebrews. 


A.  Its  Specific  Character.  — The  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  is  in  all  its  formal  and  in  some  of  its  material 
aspects  a complete  contrast  to  the  Pauline  Epistles.  It 
is  not  so  much  an  epistle  as  an  elaborate  treatise.  It  has 
no  author’s  name  superscribed,  nor  any  address  ; nor  can 
either  author  or  destination  be  from  internal  evidences 
clearly  discovered.  It  is  signally  impersonal,  though  there 
are  a few  faint  biographical  traits.  The  author  was  no 
original  disciple,  no  ear-witness  of  the  Lord  ^ ; knew  mem- 
bers of  the  Pauline  circle,®  some  Christians  of  Italy,®  and 
was  known  to  the  Church  he  addressed.  It  is  further 
clear  that  his  Judaism  is  not  Paul’s.  Paul’s  was  Pharisaic, 
scholastic,  the  Judaism  of  the  doctors  and  the  schools, 
where  the  law  was  ceremonial,  but  not  sacerdotal,  where 
it  lived  and  grew  by  being  interpreted,  burdened  life  by  a 
routine  and  custom  which  were  made  more  irksome  by  verbal 
niceties  and  more  imperious  by  dialectical  rigour ; but  our 
author’s  was  hieratic  and  hierarchic,  the  Judaism  of  the 
priests  and  the  Temple,  where  the  law  was  sacerdotal. 


1 Phil.  iii.  21,  ii.  9-1 1 ; Eph.  i.  lO. 
* Col.  i.  22. 


< Heb.  ii.  3. 

* Heb.  xiii.  23. 
® Heb.  xiii.  24. 


3 Eph.  iv.  5,  6. 


THE  JUDAISM  OF  THE  PRIEST.  32 1 

realized  in  worship,  concerned  with  the  sanctuary,  the  ser- 
vices, and  the  sacrifices,  not  with  the  reading  and  exposi- 
tion of  the  Word.  The  one  was  the  Judaism  of  the  scribe 
and  the  schoolman,  the  other  of  the  priest  and  the  Levite, 
though  not  as  known  in  Jerusalem.  Our  author’s  is  nol 
the  Temple  as  the  sordid  and  secular  Sadducaic  spirit  hac^ 
made  it,  torn  by  the  factions  begotten  of  a pride  all  tb 
meaner  that  it  was  so  aristocratic,  but  it  was  an  idea; 
temple,  the  worship  of  the  people  as  it  liv6d  in  the  fond 
imagination  of  one  who  construed  the  Holy  City  from  afar, 
and  more  as  she  lived  in  fancy  than  as  she  was  in  reality. 
It  is  such  a colonial  yet  conservative  idealization  of  the 
motherland  and  its  religion  as  we  might  have  expected  in 
an  Alexandrian,  and  Alexandrian  is  the  method  the  author 
uses  to  educe  the  new  from  the  old  and  to  sublime  the 
old  into  the  new.  He  is  an  idealist  whose  heaven  is  the 
home  of  all  transcendental  realities,  whose  earth  is  full  of 
their  symbols ; and  these  are  most  abundant  where  earth 
is  most  sacred — in  the  Temple  and  worship  of  his  people.^ 
And  so  we  are  here  without  the  sharp  antitheses  and  clear- 
cut  categories  of  the  schoolman  Paul,  the  contradictions  of 
Adam  and  Christ,  law  and  gospel,  works  and  faith,  legal 
and  evangelical  righteousness  ; but  have  instead  the  notions 
of  type  and  antitype,  shadow  and  substance,  symbol  and 
reality.  The  law  is  not  abolished,  but  fulfilled.  The 
earthly  Temple  is  transfigured  into  the  heavenly  ; the  mul- 
titudinous and  historical  priesthood  is  translated  into  the 
one  and  eternal  Priest ; the  ever  recurring  yet  never  effi- 
cacious animal  sacrifices  cease  in  the  presence  of  the  perfect 
Sacrifice  “offered  once  for  all,”  and  all  the  sensuous  ser- 
vices find  their  end  in  those  spiritual  realities  which  they’ 
foreshadowed  and  foretold.  Hence  the  law  is  not  Paul’s 
law,  nor  are  its  relations  to  the  Gospel  his  relations  ; yet 
the  positions  are  not  contradictory  or  even  contrary,  but 

1 Heb.  viii.  5,  ix.  23. 


21 


322 


THE  TEMPLE  A SYMBOLISM. 


rather  supplementary  and  corrective.  Paul’s  view  left  the 
whole  sacerdotal  side  of  Judaism  untouched  and  unex- 
plained. It  was  the  view  natural  to  one  who  had  been 
educated  a Pharisee,  and  had  become  the  Apostle  of 
the  Gentiles.  But  our  author’s  is  the  view  natural  to 
one  who  conceived  the  Temple  to  be  the  sum  and 
essence  of  Judaism,  and  who  therefore  felt  that  the  new 
faith  must  be  read  through  it  and  in  relation  to  it.; 
Hence  he  discovers  elements  in  Christianity  Paul  had 
missed,  those  realities  which  had  their  correlatives  in  the 
sacerdotal  system.  The  view  was  necessarily  more  limited 
than  Paul’s,  for  it  had  so  to  move  within  the  terms  of 
sacerdotal  Judaism  that  it  could  not  stretch  back  to  Adam 
or  out  to  the  meanest  Gentile  ; but  it  was  quite  as 
elevated  as  his,  more  emphasized  the  perfection  and  per- 
manence of  the  Gospel,  if  it  less  emphasized  its  universalism. 
Hence  Hebrews  helps  us  by  its  very  differences  from  the 
Pau’ine  Epistles  the  better  to  measure  the  range  and 
value  the  variety  of  Apostolic  thought,  especially  in  the 
point  most  cardinal  to  us — the  theological  significance  of 
the  person  of  Christ.  Not  only  is  the  construction  made 
fuller  by  this  independence  of  mind  and  change  of  stand- 
point, but  its  meaning  and  its  philosophy  alike  become  to 
us  the  more  intelligible.  The  person  is  made  to  guarantee 
the  truth  of  the  religion  ; it  owes  all  its  majesty  and  all 
its  permanence  to  its  Founder.  The  men  that  contemplate 
apostasy  are  brought  face  to  face  with  Him,  and  made  to 
feel  the  immense  renunciation  apostasy  would  involve. 

B.  Its  Theology. — Hebrews,  then,  presents  us  with  a 
quite  specific  interpretation  of  Christ,  what  we  may  term 
a theology  of  His  person  as  at  once  the  archetype  and  the 
antitype  of  Levitical  Hebraism.  As  the  archetype  it  and 
all  it  involved  were  latent  in  Him  ; as  the  antitype  it  and 
.all  it  signified  became  patent  and  were  fulfilled  in  Him. 


THEOLOGY  OF  THE  SONSHIP. 


323 


As  the  first  He  had  a Divine  and  transcendental  being, 
as  the  second  He  had  a human  and  historical,  and  these 
are  both  made  entirely  natural  by  being  through  the 
Sonship  united,  the  one  with  the  idea  of  God,  the  other 
with  the  idea  of  man.  While  this  is  the  philosphical  basis 
of  the  interpretation,  its  actual  is  the  belief  in  the  historical 
reality  of  Christ.  What  He  had  said  our  author  knew  only 
by  the  testimony  of  man,  but  this  had  been  authenticated  by 
acts  of  God.^  The  manhood  is  strongly  emphasized,  Jesus 
was  a partaker  in  our  common  “ flesh  and  blood,”  ^ made  like 
unto  His  brethren  in  all  things,^  was  tempted  as  they  are,^ 
prayed  and  cried  as  they  do.'^  Although  a Son  He  suffered, 
learned  obedience,  attaified  perfection,^  tasted  death.'^  But 
in  one  thing  He  stood  distinguished  from  man — He  was 
“ without  sin,”  ® “ holy,  guileless,  pure,  apart  from  sinners.”  ^ 
This  moral  transcendence  is  the  sign  of  an  essential  or 
personal,  which  is  expressed  by  His  distinctive  name : 
“Jesus,  the  Son  of  God.”^^  This  Sonship  is  no  mere  figure 
of  speech,  but  denotes  a reality  and  rank  of  nature  which 
qualifies  for  peculiar  and  pre-eminent  functions.  By  it  His 
place  and  work  in  the  universe,  in  humanity,  and  in  the 
history  of  Israel  are  all  determined,  as  well  as  the  per- 
manence and  sufficiency  of  His  religion. 

i.  As  Son  He  has  a certain  essential  relation  to  the  Father, 
which  can  best  be  expressed  by  metaphors : He  is  “ the 
effulgence  of  the  glory,”  “ the  image,”  or,  as  it  were,  the 
stamped  or  engraved  counterpart  of  Him  whom  we  call 
God.^^  The  change  of  metaphor  is  not  without  reason  ; 
the  first  means  that  the  Son  is  the  radiance  or  distributed 
light  through  which  the  inaccessible  “ glory  ” is  revealed 


^ Heb.  ii.  3,  4. 
» Hrb.  ii.  14. 

8 Heb.  ii.  17. 


^ Heb.  ii.  9. 

8 Heb.  iv.  15. 

8 Heb.  vii.  26. 
Heb.  iv.  14. 


8 Heb.  V.  8,  9,  ii.  10. 


* Heb.  iv.  15,  ii.  18. 
» Heb.  V.  7. 


" Heb.  i.  3. 


324 


THE  SON  AND  THE  ANGELS. 


and  known,  the  second  that  He  is  a face  reflecting  a face 
we  cannot  see,  a visible  being  upon  whom  the  exact  image 
and  superscription  of  a being  invisible  is  stamped.  The  first 
expresses  the  notion  of  a relation  as  inseparable  as  that 
between  the  centre  and  seat  of  light  and  the  light  diffused 
from  the  centre  ; the  second  expresses  the  notion  of  a 
dependence  as  absolute  as  that  of  the  figure  on  the  stamp, 
yet  of  forms  as  distinct  as  the  stamp  and  the  figure. 
The  metaphors  are  changed,  then,  that  the  ideas  of  identity 
and  difference  may  be  expressed  ; and  so  construed  they 
are  bolder  and  more  explicative  phrases  than  any  Paul  had 
attempted.  They  were  destined  to  suggest  later  many  kin- 
dred similes,  and,  based  on  the  similes,  speculations  without 
end.  But  the  metaphors  do  not  stand  alone  ; the  writer 
elucidates  them  by  the  deductions  he  draws.  The  Father 
commands  all  His  angels  to  worship  the  Son^;  Pie  is  ad- 
dressed as  o ^609^;  He  makes  time  and  all  it  doth  inhabit,^ 
sustains  all  things  by  the  word  of  His  power,  and  is  appointed 
heir  of  alH  In  these  phrases,  as  in  the  metaphors,  the  ideas 
of  difference  and  identity  struggle  into  expression  ; Father 
and  Son  are  distinguished,  yet  each  is  o ^eo9,  without  any 
conscious  breach  with  monotheism  on  the  writer’s  part,  or 
the  anticipation  of  any  consciousness  of  incongruity  on  the 
reader’s.  And  this  Son  is  the  Jesus  Christ  who  sums  up 
in  Himself  the  old  covenant  and  institutes  the  new,  makes 
purification  of  sins,  and  is  exalted  to  the  right  hand  of 
the  Majesty  in  the  heavens  : « 77  ho^a  eU  tov<;  alo)va<;  twv 
aloivtxiv'  dfjbr\v.^ 

ii.  The  determinative  idea  of  the  Epistle  is  the  Sonship  ; 
and  what  it  is  used  to  determine  is  the  spiritual  pre- 
eminence, perfection,  and  permanence  of  the  New  Cove- 
nant, in  contrast  to  the  sensuousness,  insufficiency,  and 


» Heb.  i.  6. 
* Heb.  i.  8. 


® Heb.  i.  2. 
< Heb.  i.  3. 


® Heb.  xiii.  21. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN. 


325 


transitoriness  of  the  Old.  The  whole  matter  is  stated  in 
the  opening  verse : it  is  the  same  God  who  has  spoken 
to  the  fathers  in  the  prophets  and  to  us  in  the  Son ; 
but  their  revelation,  as  became  its  form,  was  fragmentary 
and  partial,  while  ours,  because  its  form  is  perfect,  has 
perfect  truth.  Hence  the  Son  is  the  pivot  on  which  the 
. argument  everywhere  turns  ; and  so  the  opening  paragraph 
states  His  significance,  defining  His  relation  to  God  and  the 
universe.  This  relation  is  explicated  in  a series  of  contrasts. 

(a)  The  first  is  between  the  angels  who  had  given 
the  Old  Covenant  and  the  Son  who  had  instituted  the 
New.^  He  was  God’s  Son,  had  the  name,  the  throne,  the 
sceptre,  the  eternity,  the  authority,  of  God  ; but  they  were 
only  creatures,  ministers  of  God’s  will.  But  this  Being 
who  was  supreme  over  angels  used  His  supremacy  in 
the  most  godlike  way,  not  simply  to  rule  as  a Sovereign, 
but  to  succour  as  a Saviour.  The  angel  remains  an  angel 
for  ever,  created  being  can  only  be  what  it  was  created 
to  be ; but  the  essence  of  Sonship  is  the  permanence  of 
the  relation  even  under  variability  of  form.  So,  as  He 
would  succour  men,  and  men  could  be  succoured  only  by 
man,^  Jesus  is  made  a little  lower  than  the  angels,  and 
becomes  one  with  those  He  would  save,  and  in  order  to 
be  able  to  save  He  suffers  and  tastes  death.^  For  it  was 
a thing  that  became  God  to  qualify  the  Saviour  for  saving 
by  suffering,  and  a thing  necessary  to  man  to  have  a High 
Priest  “ without  sin,”  yet  sympathetic  through  endurance  of 
all  the  trials  and  temptations  common  to  man.^  Hence 
among  men,  as  over  the  angels,  Jesus,  because  the  Son,  stood 
pre-eminent,  now  Saviour  as  before  Creator  and  Sovereign. 

(yS)  But  this  contrast  is  general,  relates  to  quality  and 
rank  of  being,  and  on  it  as  a basis  there  come  several 
specific  contrasts  within  the  sphere  of  history,  and  so  of 

* Heb.  i.  4-14.  * Heb.  ii.  9,  10. 

* Heb.  ii.  14-17.  * Heb.  ii.  17,  18. 


326  PRIESTHOODS  CHANGEABLE  AND  UNCHANGEABLE. 

religiorij  especially  Israel’s.  First,  He  stands  distinguished 
from  Moses  as  the  Son  from  the  servant,  as  the  Builder 
of  the  theocratic  house  from  the  house  which  He  builds, 
as  the  One  who  designed  the  whole  from  him  who 
executes  a part^  Secondly,  as  a Priest  He  stands  dis- 
tinguished from  Aaron  and  his  priesthood  in  many  ways  ; 
He  belongs  to  a different  order — viz.,  that  of  Melchisedec, 
king  and  priest  in  one,  the  direct  creation  of  God,  without 
any  of  the  accidents  of  time,  independent  of  descent, 
independent  of  descendants,^  alone,  sinless,  eternal,  with- 
out any  needs  in  Himself,  sufficient  always  for  all  the 
needs  and  sins  of  men.'^  Hence  He  fulfils  all  priestly 
ideas  and  functions,  and  by  abiding  a priest  for  ever  super- 
sedes and  ends  man’s  perishable  priests  and  changeable 
priesthoods.^  But  He  cannot  displace  the  persons,  and  leave 
all  they  did  and  represented  standing  as  before.  And  so, 
thirdly,  the  institutions  or  religions  are  contrasted,  as  were 
their  founders  and  representatives,  yet  so  as  to  bring  out  the 
new  in  the  old,  the  permanent  in  the  transitory.  The  whole 
ancient  apparatus  of  worship  is  resolved  into  a symbolism 
which  dies  in  the  presence  of  the  reality.  The  Son  is 
sacrifice  as  well  as  priest,  and  it  has  all  the  qualities  of  His 
person,  is  one  as  He  is  one,  is  spiritual  and  perfect,  eternal 
and  universal  as  He  is,  ends  all  sensuous  sacrifices  as  He 
ends  all  historical  priesthoods  with  their  proud  inanities 
of  succession  and  descent.  Where  the  priest  and  sacrifice 
are,  there  must  the  temple  be  ; Jesus  has  passed  into  the 
heavens,  and  where  He  is  there  is  the  holy  of  holies,  while 
the  outer  and  lower  courts  are  where  men  wait,  sure  that 
the  Mediator  lives  within.®  And  the  men  who  have  this 
assurance  are  men  of  faith,^  and  the  mention  of  faith 

^ Heb.  iii.  i-6.  ^ Heb.  vii.  24-28. 

^ Heb.  vii.  4-22.  ^ Heb.  viii.  3,  ix.  11-14,  25,  26,  x.  10-14. 

3 Heb.  V.  5,  6,  vi.  20,  vii.  1-3.  ® Heb.  viii.  1-4,  ix.  ii,  24,  x.  12,  19-22. 

” Heb.  X.  23,  38. 


THE  FOUNDER  AND  THE  RELIGION. 


327 


gives  the  author  the  opportunity  of  transcending  these 
contrasts  of  his,  and  showing  that  beneath  the  outward 
difference  is  an  inward  harmony.  Christ  did  not  begin 
to  be  with  His  birth  or  incarnation  ; He  had  ever  been  ; 
and  the  evidence  of  His  permanent  being  is  the  being  of 
His  people.  Judaism  did  not  create  the  religious  life  within 
and  before  it.  Its  symbols  and  .shadows  had  not  created 
spirit  or  given  life.  Christ  had.  What  had  made  the  saints 
and  martyrs  was  not  the  priests  and  sacrifices  of  the  law, 
but  faith.  Hence  faith  was  no  new  thing ; all  the  heroes 
and  the  saints  under  the  Old  Covenant  had  been  made 
heroic  and  saintly  by  faith,  and  not  by  the  sensuous  worship. 
Faith,  which  has  always  and  everywhere  been  the  principle 
creative  of  obedience,  is  as  old  as  man,  and  those  who  have 
lived  by  it  form  a society  at  once  earthly  and  heavenly, 
of  all  ages  and  all  places,  which  has  been  united  in  Christ, 
those  before  as  those  after  His  coming  being  made  per- 
fect by  Him.^  And  so  there  is  constituted  under  the  new 
covenant  a new  Israel,  within  a new  city  of  God,  where, 
without  the  audible  thunder  and  the  visible  pomp  of  the  old, 
Jesus,  the  Mediator,  lives  His  gracious  life  and  performs 
His  gracious  work.^  And  so,  as  becomes  the  Son  of  God, 
eternal  in  heaven,  universal  on  earth,  Jesus  Christ  remains 
“the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever.”^ 

The  Christology  of  Hebrews,  as  of  Paul,  is  thus  quite 
as  much  a philosophy  of  history  as  a theology — i.e.,  it  is 
a means  of  so  uniting  God  and  man  that  the  two  cannot 
be  divorced,  of  so  conceiving  our  past  that  it  becomes  the 
realm  of  His  activity.  The  thought  is  wonderful  for  its  large 
outlook  and  organic  unity.  There  are  relations  within  Deity 
which  are  the  basis  of  all  the  relations  Deity  can  ever 
sustain.  Creation  is  by  the  Son  and  for  Him.  He  is  by 
nature  Mediator,  all  the  relations  of  the  Creator  to  the 

^ Heb.  xi.  2 Heb.  xii.  18-24. 

3 Heb.  xiii.  8. 


328  THE  CHRISTOLOGY  OF  JAMES  REPRESENTS 

creature  and  the  creature  to  the  Creator  are  through  Him 
and  because  of  Him.  His  Sonship  is  the  condition  of  man’s  ; 
in  order  to  its  apprehension  man  was  trained  by  legal -and 
symbolical  institutions  ; in  order  to  its  realization  the  Son 
had  to  partake  of  a manhood  that  did  suffer,  but  did  not 
sin.  And  the  man  who  wrote  these  things  was  a Jew,  and 
he  wrote  them  for  Jews,  and  the  cause  of  their  being  written 
was  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  who  had  only  a generation  before 
been  despised  by  the  Jews  as  a man  without  letters,  and 
crucified  by  their  chiefs  and  rulers  as  a blasphemer  against 
Moses  and  against  God.  Certainly  there  are  things  here 
that  need  explanation,  if  we  are  to  believe  in  the  reason- 
ableness of  man. 

§ III.— The  Minor  Christologies. 

A.  The  Jacobean. — In  James  we  have  a complete  con- 
trast both  to  Paul  and  Hebrews.  Its  most  remarkable 
feature  is  not — what  so  offended  Luther — the  opposition  to 
Pauline  doctrine,  but  the  poverty  of  its  Christology  and  the 
paucity  of  its  references  to  the  historical  Christ.  These 
things  are  organically  connected ; it  is  because  the  writer 
has  so  little  sense  of  the  one  that  he  feels  no  need  for  the 
other.  It  is  an  invariable  rule  in  the  primitive  as  in  the 
later  Church  : where  the  historical  sense  is  least  real,  the 
theological  construction  is  most  empty.  James,  indeed,  has 
more  the  spirit  and  attitude  of  the  liberal  synagogue  than 
of  the  persuaded  Church  ; and  possibly  his  book  is  in  the 
canon  to  show  how  large  and  tolerant  the  early  Church 
was,  and  all  Churches  ought  to  be.  His  invisible  audience 
is,  as  it  were,  the  assemblies  of  mixed  minds,  interests, 
classes  that  were  properly  neither  Church  nor  synagogue, 
but  had  something  of  both.  We  are  here  without  the  anti- 
theses of  Paul  or  the  contrasts  of  Hebrews  ; the  Gospel  is 
a new  law  ^ ; men  are  to  be  doers  of  the  Word,  and  not 

* James  i.  25. 


THE  SYNAGOGUE  WITHIN  THE  CHURCH. 


329 


hearers  only/  justified  as  Abraham  was  by  works.^  This 
law,  indeed,  is  “ the  law  of  liberty,”  ^ but  his  liberty  is  rather 
a change  in  the  terms  of  the  law  than,  like  Paul’s,  “ freedom 
from  its  bondage.”  The  attitude  was  thoroughly  charac- 
teristic of  James.  He  was  late  in  recognizing  the  Lord, 
though  he  had  lived  face  to  face  with  Him  longer  than 
any  other  disciple,  and  he  was  always  more  anxious 
about  the  retention  of  the  old  than  the  acceptance  or  com- 
prehension of  the  new.  He  is  the  Apostolical  representative 
of  the  historical  continuity,  that  in  its  devotion  to  form  and 
letter  forgets  substance  and  spirit.  The  position  given  to  him 
on  account  of  his  kinship  he  neither  deserved  nor  had  earned, 
and  it  only  enabled  him  to  use  in  government  aims  and 
abilities  that  hardly  qualified  him  for  service.  His  address 
in  the  Apostolic  Council  ^ and  his  behaviour  to  Paul  ^ are 
quite  in  keeping  with  his  Epistle  ; and  we  can  well  under- 
stand the  feeling  of  the  man  who  was  brave  because  he 
understood  Christ,  to  the  man  who  was  timid  because  of  his 
failure  to  understand.®  Yet  even  in  James  there  are  the 
germs  of  a Christology.  He  describes  himself  as  the  “servant 
of  God  and  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,”’’  a most  significant 
co-ordination.  This  same  Jesus  Christ  is  “the  Lord  of 
glory.”®  He  is  the  One  in  whose  name  men  pray,  and 
who  answers  prayer.®  Of  Him  0 Kvpio^  is  used  in  the 
most  absolute  sense,^®  and  he  passes  without  any  feeling  of 
the  unfit  from  using  it  of  Christ  to  applying  it  to  Deity.’’ 
Further,  He  conceives  Him  as  lawgiver  and  judge,’^  speaking 
the  word  of  truth,  giving  and  enforcing  the  perfect  law 
of  liberty.  The  Christology  is  so  rudimentary  because  of 
a double  defect, — it  is  not  rooted  in  the  historical  Person, 

* James  i.  22.  ^ James  i.i. 

2 James  ii.  21.  » James  ii.  i 

* James  ii.  12,  i.  25.  ® James  v.  13,  14. 


^ Acts  XV.  13-21. 

® Acts  xxi.  18-25  : cf.  Gal.  ii.  12. 
* Gal.  ii.  2,  9. 


James  v.  7,  8. 
James  v.  10,  1 1. 
James  iv.  12,  v.  9. 


330 


PETER  CONCEIVES  CHRIST 


has  no  element  distinctive  of  His  consciousness  save  the 
inwardness  of  His  law  as  distinguished  from  the  outwardness  of 
the  Pharisaic  ; and  it  has  no  knowledge  of  the  Sonship,  or  any 
trace  of  any  sense  or  idea  of  what  it  signified  and  involved. 
Yet  the  thought  is  significant,  as  showing  how  much  the  living 
consensus  had  affected  even  so  timid  and  conservative  a mind. 

B.  The  Petrine. — In  Peter  we  have  a different  spirit 
and  atmosphere.  There  is  a strong  sense  of  the  reality  of 
Christ’s  person,  of  His  sinlessness,^  His  sufferings,^  His 
meekness  yet  endurance  under  trial  ^ — qualities  that  might 
well  be  stamped  on  Peter’s  mind — of  His  death  and  the 
cross  on  which  He  died,^  of  the  offence  caused  by  His 
death, ^ of  His  resurrection  and  the  effect  it  had  on  the 
faith  and  hope  of  His  society.^  But  while  his  Christology 
has  a character  of  its  own,  it  is  in  the  spontaneous  rather 
than  the  articulated  stage,  the  product  of  a man  who  took 
what  we  may  term  a vernacular  view  of  both  the  old  and 
the  new  religion.  He  feels  the  continuity  of  God’s  people 
as  only  one  of  the  people  can.  He  loves  to  think  of  the 
mode  of  entering  into  their  number  as  a new  birth,^  of 
each  member  as  a “ living  stone,”  of  the  society  they  con- 
stitute as  a “ spiritual  house,”  of  the  collective  being  as  a 
“ holy  priesthood,”  and  their  common  function  to  offer  up 
“spiritual  sacrifices.”®  He  has  no  philosophy  as  to  the 
vocation  or  institutions  of  Israel ; he  has  only  the  most 
vivid  intuition,  born  of  personal  experience,  into  the  signi- 
ficance of  Christ,  who  by  faith  and  hope  creates  the  people 
elect  of  God.^  The  fundamental  fact  is  the  Sonship  ; God 
is  “the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,”  and  so  “abundant 
in  mercy.”  Though  the  appearance  of  Christ  is  recent,  yet, 

* I Peter  ii.  22,  i.  10.  ® i Peter  i.  3,  21,  iii.  21. 

* I Peter  i.,  ii.  21,  iv.  I.  ^ i Peter  i.  3,  23. 

® I Peter  ii.  23.  ® i Peter  ii.  5. 

^ I Peter  ii.  24,  iii.  18  ^ i Peter  i.  2,  5,  9,  ii.  4,  9. 

® I Peter  ii.  4,  7,  8.  i Peter  i.  3. 


AS  THE  FULFILMENT  OF  PROPHECY. 


331 


the  reality  He  signified  is  ancient.  His  Spirit  was  in  the 
prophets,  who  were  in  a sense  pre-Christian  evangelists, 
testifying  beforehand  of  His  sufferings  and  the  glory  that 
was  to  follow.^  In  harmony  with  this  he  conceived  those 
sufferings  as  in  a sense  extra-temporal.  While  endured 
at  a specific  moment  they  had  a being  in  the  mind  of 
God,  and  were,  because  of  His  inspiration,  preached  by  the 
prophets  before  they  happened.^  Though  manifested  only 
in  these  last  times.  He  was  foreknown  before  the  foundation 
of  the  world,^  had  ever  been  within  and  before  the  eternal 
mind,  as  it  were  the  medium  through  which  it  saw  and 
conceived  what  was  to  be.  This  foreknown  Lamb  who  is 
without  blemish  and  without  spot  is  a sacrifice  ; He  bears 
our  sins  in  His  own  body  on  the  tree,  and  by  His  stripes 
we  are  healed.^  He  is,  too,  the  Christ,  the  Messiah,  whose 
coming  makes  the  day  the  prophets  had  foretold.^  With 
Peter,  as  with  Paul,  the  name  has  ceased  to  be  official,  and 
become  personal,  Christ  often  occurring  alone,  Jesus  never 
without  Christ.  He  has  passed  into  the  heavens,  sits  at 
the  right  hand  of  God,  and  has  angels  and  principalities 
and  powers  subject  unto  Him.*^  He  is  the  Shepherd  and 
Bishop  of  souls,^  the  Judge  of  the  world,®  our  Lord, 
absolutely,  like  God.^  Here,  too,  citations  from  the  Old 
Testament  which  refer  to  Jehovah  are  directly  applied  to 
Him.^®  Peter  is  clear  that  no  inferior  dignity  can  be  His, 
though  he  may  be  unable  to  tell  or  even  clearly  to  see 
how  His  high  titles  affect  the  old  monotheism.  One 
thing  he  surely  knows — Jesus  is  to  Him  now  both  Lord 


and  Christ.^^ 


^ I Peter  i.  10,  ll. 

2 I Peter  i.  12. 

* I Peter  i.  20. 

* I Peter  i.  18,  19,  ii.  24,  iii.  18. 


* I Peter  i.  ii. 

® I Peter  iii  22. 
^ I Peter  ii.  25. 


I Peter  iv.  5,  v.  3. 


^ I Peter  ii.  13,  cf.  i.  25. 

I Peter  ii.  3,  4,  cf.  Psalm  xxxiv.  8;  i Peter  iii.  15,  cf.  Isa.  viii.  13. 
Doxology,  I Peter  iv.  1 1 ; cf.  Acts  ii.  36. 


332 


THE  APOCALYPSE  A CIIRISTOLOGY 


C.  The  Apocalyptic. — The  Apocalypse  is  the  most 
Jewish  book  in  the  New  Testament,  inspired,  as  it  were, 
by  a passion  for  the  people  rather  than  for  a school  or  a 
system,  and  its  character  is  stamped  into  its  language 
imagery,  symbolism,  associations,  and  thought.  It  loves  the 
holy  people,  the  holy  land,  the  holy  city,  the  old  tribal 
divisions,  the  Temple  as  the  home  not  of  the  priesthood, 
but  of  the  people’s  God  and  His  worship.  This  affects  the 
forms  under  which  Jesus  is  conceived  and  represented.  He 
is  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  and,  to  indicate  His  Messianic 
character,  its  Lion,^  at  once  the  Root  and  the  Offspring  of 
David,^  the  Anointed  of  the  Lord.'*^  As  Son  of  man  He 
more  resembles  the  vision  of  Daniel  than  the  Jesus  of  the 
Gospels,  and  He  is  described  more  in  the  terms  of  the  altar 
and  the  Temple  than  of  history.^  He  appears  in  priestly 
garments,  and  His  most  loved  name  is  “the  Lamb,”  slain  that 
He  might  cleanse  by  His  blood.^  Yet  a significant  touch  is 
the  use  of  the  historical  name,  Jesus,  qualified  now  and  then 
by  Lord.®  All  the  more,  because  of  these  characteristics, 
is  its  doctrine  of  the  Person  remarkable.  Christ  is  conceived 
as  the  Son  of  God  ; God  is  in  a peculiar  and  indeed  exclusive 
sense  His  Father.'^  On  the  throne  beside  the  Father  sits 
the  Son,  and  indeed  it  is  expressly  named  “ the  throne  of 
God  and  of  the  Lamb.”  ® He  is  the  absolute  Lord,  exalted 
above  all  kings.^  He  is  the  Holy  and  the  True,^®  receives 
Divine  honour  and  worship  ; in  the  doxologies  His  name  and 
the  Father’s  stand  together  the  radiance  that  surrounds 
Him  is  that  Divine  radiance  which  no  mortal  can  bear.^^ 
He  is  omniscient ; like  God,  He  searcheth  the  heart  and  the 

^ Rev.  V.  5.  ® Rev.  xi.  15,  xii.  10. 

2 Rev.  V.  5,  xxii.  16.  ^ Rev.  i.  13. 

^ Rev.  V.  6,  12,  xiii.  8.  The  term  apvlov  is  applied  to  Christ  twenty-nine 
times. 

® Rev,  i.  9,  xii.  17,  xiv.  12,  xxii,  20,  21.  ® Rev^  vii,  17,  xxii,  i,  3. 

^ Rev.  i.  6,  ii.  18,  27,  iii,  5,  21,  xiv.  i.  ® Rev.  i.  5,  xvii.  14,  xix,  16. 

Rev.  iii.  7,  xix.  ii.  “ Rev.  i.  5,  6,  vii.  10-12.  Rev.  i.  17. 


IN  VISIONS  AND  IN  SYMBOLS. 


333 


reins,  rules  and  judges  the  heathen,  breaking  their  strength 
like  a potter’s  vessel.’  He  is  eternal,  the  beginning  of  the 
creation  of  God,  the  Ancient  of  Days,  to  whom  belongs 
the  Divine  symbols  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  first  and  the 
last,  the  unbeginning  and  the  unending."  These  are 
extraordinary  titles  and  prerogatives  to  be  claimed  by  one 
who  has  all  the  monotheistic  passion  of  the  Jew,  for  one 
who  has  the  simple  name  Jesus,  and  is  still  remembered 
as  the  Crucified.  Nowhere  does  the  author  show  any 
consciousness  that  the  Divine  attributes  and  functions  in 
which  he  has  clothed  the  Christ  can  in  any  way  injure 
either  the  unity  or  the  supremacy  of  God.  His  thought, 
indeed,  is  expressed,  but  not  articulated  ; he  does  not  tell 
us  how  to  relate  or  reconcile  its  antinomies,  but  simply 
leaves  us  in  awed  yet  tender  adoration  before  the  throne 
of  God  and  the  Lamb. 

' Rev.  ii.  23,  27,  xii.  5,  xix.  15. 

* Rev.  iii.  14,  i.  8,  ii,  17,  xxii.  8,  13, 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  HISTORICAL  BOOKS. 

WHILE  the  books  hitherto  studied  have  aimed  at  the 
interpretation  of  the  Person,  they  have  simply 
assumed  His  history  as  known.  Now  we  have  to  deal  with 
those  whose  special  concern  is  the  history.  The  Gospels  are 
all  the  work  of  believers,  and  are  written  for  believers  and  in 
order  to  belief.  On  this  point  they  are  frankly  sincere,  and 
their  sincerity  has  its  own  worth.  Scepticism  is  not  veracity, 
and  of  all  the  mirrors  held  up  to  nature  it  is  the  least  capable 
of  reflecting  nature  truly.  The  guide  to  truth  must  himself 
be  convinced  ; honest  belief  in  the  person  he  testifies  of  does 
not  disqualify  a witness.  But  what  concerns  us  is,  not  the 
criticism  of  the  books  or  their  authors,  but  simply  this — first, 
how  do  the  men  who  write  the  history  conceive  the  Person 
they  describe  ? and,  secondly,  how  do  they  correlate  the  two — 
the  Person  as  they  conceive  Him  and  the  events  which  they 
narrate  ? 


§ L— The  Synoptic  Gospels. 

A.  Mark. — He  is  our  oldest  authority.  To  him  Jesus  is 
the  Messiah,^  the  beloved  Son  of  God,^  who  cannot  in  the 
most  solemn  moment  of  His  life  deny  either  His  office  or  His 
Sonship.^  The  Baptist  is  the  prophet  who  prepares  His  way, 


1 Mark  i.  I. 


2 Mark  i.  2. 


® Mark  xiv.  6i,  xv.  2 


MARK  CONCEIVES  JESUS  AS  THE  MESSIAH. 


335 


and  tells  what  His  work  shall  be.^  The  baptism  sets  Him 
apart,  the  temptation  fits  Him  by  trial  for  His  work,  which 
He  begins  by  preaching  the  Gospel,  and  so  instituting  the 
kingdom.^  His  acts,  like  His  speech,  express  His  Messianic 
dignity  and  power.  He  casts  out  unclean  spirits,  and  they 
recognize  Flim.^  He  forgives  sins,  which  confessedly  none  can 
do  but  God  only.^  He  claims  to  be  Lord  of  the  Sabbath,  and 
acts  according  to  His  claim.^  The  men  He  called,  once  they 
have  learned  to  know  Him,  confess  that  He  is  the  Messiah, 
and  He  then  explains  the  destiny  of  suffering  and  death 
involved  in  the  office,^  His  speech  growing  ever  more  impres- 
sive and  explicit.^  The  very  people  come  to  recognize  Him, 
and  He  does  not  refuse  their  homage.^  His  words  are  to 
endure  for  ever  ; He  is  to  return  to  judgment,  to  reign  in 
glory,  to  gather  His  elect  from  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth 
and  the  heaven.^  He  founds  the  new  covenant  in  His  blood, 
which  is  shed  for  many.^°  The  Gospel,  then,  may  be  limited 
in  its  scope,  but  is  clear  in  its  purpose.  It  is  concerned  with 
no  more  than  the  life  which  unfolds  the  Messiahship,  but  what 
it  does  unfold  is  the  life  of  the  Messiah.  Its  moral  is  in  the 
cry  of  the  centurion  : “ Truly  this  man  was  Son  of  God.”^^ 

B.  Matthew. — Here  we  have  no  clearer  a doctrine  of  the 
Messiahship,  but  we  have  it  more  fully  unfolded — placed, 
as  it  were,  in  its  historical  relations.  Matthew  sees  that  the 
Person  cannot  appear  suddenly  on  the  stage,  without  antece- 
dents in  the  past,  or  any  prophet  but  the  Baptist,  or  other 
sanction  than  the  Baptism.  He  was  woven  into  the  history 
of  Israel,  was  indeed  the  very  end  of  Israel’s  being  ; and  so 
the  inter-relations  are  indicated,  that  He  through  Israel  and 

^ Mark  i.  2-8.  ® Mark  viii.  27-31. 

2 Mark  i.  10-15.  ^ Mark  ix.  12,  31,  x.  33,  34,  38,  45. 

3 Mark  i.  23,  24,  34,  iii.  ii,  v.  7.  » Mark  x.  47,  49,  52,  xi.  9,  10. 

^ Mark  ii.  5-12.  9 Mark  xiii.  26,  27,  31,  35-37. 

* Mark  ii.  27,  28.  Mark  xiv.  24. 

“ Mark  xv.  39. 


336  MATTHEW  CONNECTS  JESUS  WITH  THE  JEWS, 


Israel  through  Him  may  alike  be  justified.  This  is  the 
reason  of  the  genealogy  which  is  but  an  expansion  of 
positions  we  have  found  in  Paul  and  the  Apocalypse  : Jesus 
is  of  the  Jews,  the  people  were  elect  for  Him.^  His  personal 
name  is  made  to  express  His  function,^  and  the  official  name 
is  used  with  a caution  unknown  to  Mark.^  Incidents  at  His 
birth  at  once  fulfil  prophecy  and  indicate  office  and  rank.'^ 
And  this  is  characteristic  ; His  history  as  a whole  and  in 
its  details,  alike  as  regards  His  action  and  His  suffering,  is  a 
fulfilment  of  Prophecy,^  while  His  work  fulfils  also  the  Law.^ 
This  fulfilment  dismisses  the  form  that  it  may  realize  the 
Spirit,  and  gives  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus  in  Matthew  a 
peculiar  ethical  quality — it  is  spiritual  and  prophetic,  as 
distinguished,  on  the  one  hand,  from  the  rabbinical,  and, 
on  the  other,  from  the  sacerdotal.'^  And  this  quality  in 
His  teaching  gives  a distinctive  position  and  authority  to 
His  person.  Jesus  is  in  Matthew  not  so  much  a prophet 
as  a new  lawgiver  and  king,  the  regal  elements  in  the 
Messianic  idea  being  those  most  emphasized.®  He  is  the 
standard  of  action  ; deeds  done  to  His  are  done  to  Him, 
and  either  condemn  or  acquit  the  doer.®  His  person  is 
greater  than  the  Temple.^®  He  has  all  power  in  heaven  and 
on  earth,  and  in  His  final  words  the  Son  is  co-ordinated 

with  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Spirit.^^  This  Gospel  then 

1 Matt.  i.  I,  17.  ^ Matt.  i.  16,  xxvii.  17,  22. 

2 Matt.  i.  21.  ■*  Matt.  i.  22,  23,  ii.  1-6,  14,  15,  17,  18,  23. 

® Cf.  Matt.  viii.  17,  xii.  17,  xiii.  14,  35,  xxi.  4,  xxvii.  9,  35. 

® Matt.  V.  17,  18.  In  this  passage  the  idea  of  “law”  has  affinities  with 
Paul  rather  than  Hebrews,  but  “ fulfil  ” with  Hebrews  rather  than  Paul 
— z.e.,  the  law  is  not  Levitical,  concerned  with  the  Temple  and  the  priest- 
hood, but  ceremonial,  the  law  as  read  in  the  synagogue  and  interpreted 
in  the  schools.  To  “fulfil”  is  to  translate  its  ceremonial  form  into  ethical 
terms  : cf.  vii.  12. 

^ Cf.  Matt,  V.  21  ff,  ix.  13,  xii.  7,  xv.  11-20. 

® Matt,  xxviii.  20,  xvi.  27.  Hence  the  peculiar  quality  which  we  find  in 
Matthews  version  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  the  prominence  he 
gives  to  the  later  apocalyptic  addresses  and  parables. 

® Matt.  XXV.  34-46.  Matt.  xii.  6.  Matt,  xxviii.  16-20. 


BUT  LUKE  CONNECTS  HUM  WITH  MAN. 


337 


exhibits  Jesus  as  the  end  of  Israel,  the  reason  and  goal  of 
Israel’s  history,  who  by  educing  the  new  spirit  out  of  the 
old  forms  does  not  destroy  but  fulfils  the  Law.  But  while 
Matthew  brings  Jesus  through  Israel,  he  does  not  limit  Him 
to  Israel.  The  Magi  are  as  .symbolical  of  Matthew  as  the 
prophets  ; they  mean  that  Jesus  is  for  Gentile  as  well  as 
Jew.  Men  from  the  East  and  West  shall  sit  down  with 
Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob  in  the  kingdom  of  God.^  The 
kingdom  is  to  be  taken  from  the  Jew  and  given  to  the 
Gentile.^  The  Gospel  is  to  be  preached  in  all  the  world 
for  a witness  to  all  nations  ^ ; and  the  risen  Christ  com- 
mands His  disciples  to  “ teach  all  nations.”*  Certainly  this 
is  no  mere  Gospel  for  the  Hebrews  ; there  is  a universalism 
in  it  which  corresponds  to  its  notion  of  Jesus.  Since  He  was 
no  accident,  but  the  result  of  God’s  action  in  history,  His 
work  must  be  as  wide  as  God. 

C.  Luke. — He  places  Jesus,  not  simply,  like  Matthew,  in 
relation  to  Hebrew,  but  to  universal  history.  Flis  genealogy 
does  not  stop  with  Abraham,  but  mounts  to  Adam,  “ which 
was  the  son  of  God.”  ^ He  comes  as  “ a light  to  enlighten 
the  Gentiles”®  and  to  create  on  earth  peace.”^  He  bears 
from  the  first  the  official  name,  is  now  Christ  the  Lord  ® and 
now  the  Lord’s  Christ.®  Yet  His  Hebrew  descent  is  not 
forgotten  ; He  is  to  sit  on  the  throne  of  His  father  David, 
and  reign  over  the  house  of  Jacob  for  ever.^®  In  Him  ancient 
promises  and  prophecies  are  fulfilled.^^  Jesus,  then,  comes 
through  Israel,  but  for  mankind.  The  rejected  of  His  own 
people  turns  to  the  Gentiles,  and  finds  room  for  all  ; but  this 
not  because  of  their  act,  but  because  of  His  own  will  and 


^ Matt.  viii.  ii. 

* M itt.  xxi.  43. 

* Matt.  xxiv.  14, 


^ Luke  ii.  14. 
® Luke  ii.  il. 
® Luke  ii.  26. 


* Matt,  xxviii.  19, 


10  Luke  i.  32,  33. 

**  Luke  i.  54,  55,  68-80. 

**  Luke  xiv.  22,  xiii.  24-30. 


* Luke  iii.  38. 
® Luke  ii.  32. 


22 


338  LUKE  UNIVERSAL  AND  SOTERIOLOGICAL. 

grace.^  In  Luke,  more  than  in  any  other  Gospel,  Jesus  is 
severe  to  privilege  and  impious  pride,  but  tender  and  gracious 
to  the  'sinner.  Here  we  have  the  parables,  peculiar  to  this 
Gospel,  of  the  Lost  Sheep,  the  Lost  Coin,  the  Prodigal 
Son,  the  Good  Samaritan,  the  Rich  Man  and  Lazarus,  the 
Pharisee  and  the  Publican,  and  such  incidents  as  the  calling 
of  Zacchaeus.^  The  parables  spring  out  of  the  conditions 
around  Plim,  but  they  represent  His  relations  to  the  world. 
The  Publican  is  justified  in  the  presence  of  the  Pharisee,  the 
Samaritan  condemns  the  priest  and  the  Levite,  and  human 
nature,  alike  in  its  commonest  and  noblest  instincts,  vindicates 
the  ways  of  grace.  Hence,  as  Matthew  exhibits  Christ  in  His 
authoritative  and  royal  functions,  Luke  exhibits  Him  more  in 
His  restorative.  He  is  a Saviour,  His  mission  is  to  the  lost ; it 
is  because  of  the  very  essence  of  His  character  and  work  that 
He  is  offensive  to  the  proud  Jew  and  welcome  to  the  Gentile 
and  the  sinner.  The  emphasis  on  the  soteriology  only  exalts 
the  Christology.  The  more  universal  His  person  becomes  the 
more  special  grows  PI  is  work  ; in  the  degree  that  He  ceases  to 
be  the  Jewish  Messiah  He  becomes  the  Saviour  of  men. 

§ 1 1. — The  Fourth  Gospel. 

As  regards  the  Johannine  writings,  the  distinction  of  his- 
torical and  expository  books  can  hardly  be  carried  out.  The 
Gospel  and  the  Pdrst  Epistle  are  here  taken  together,  as  if  they 
constituted  a sort  of  organic  unity. 

A.  Relations  and  Characteristics  of  the  Gospel. — 
In  John  we  seem  to  enter  into  quite  another  order  of  ideas 
than  we  find  in  the  Synoptics,  but  it  is  an  order  that  has 
grown  out  of  theirs.  The  development  is  so  legitimate 
that  we  may  term  it  inevitable.  Mark  conceives  Jesus  as 

^ Cf.  the  words  that  mark  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  His  ministry, 
Luke  iv.  24-27,  xxiv.  47. 

* Luke  XV.,  X.  30,  37,  xvi.  19-31,  xviii.  10-14,  xix.  i-io. 


JOHN  UNIVERSAL  AND  THEOLOGICAL. 


339 


the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  holy,  miraculous  in  His  action, 
extraordinary  in  His  person,  designed  of  God  to  a special 
work.  On  the  basis  of  this  notion  Matthew  exhibited  His 
relation  to  Israel,  Luke  His  relation  to  man,  John  His 
relation  to  God.  Mark  introduced  Him  as  a sort  of  unan- 
nounced miracle,  Matthew  made  law  and  prophecy  prepare 
for  Him,  Luke  man  wait  for  Him,  John  God  send  Him. 
There  is  not  so  much  of  the  supernatural  in  John  as  in 
Mark — indeed,  there  is  less — but  there  is  more  of  God  and 
His  action,  though  the  action  is  altogether  natural  to  God. 
The  history  of  Matthew  involves  as  gracious  a cause  and 
as  universal  an  end  as  the  soteriology  of  Luke,  but  the 
form  is  more  special,  the  colouring  more  local.  In  order 
to  do  justice  to  the  ideal  element  in  the  mind  of  the 
Evangelists  we  must  live  in  their  world.  Their  nature  was 
not  the  narrow  and  rigid  thing  defined  by  modern  physical 
or  scientific  law  ; it  was  a nature  that  lived  in  eternity  and 
was  alive  with  God.  Our  tendency  is  to  confine  God  within 
the  laws  and  limitations  of  nature  ; theirs  was  to  penetrate 
and  fill  nature  with  the  presence  and  the  energies  of  God. 
The  more  intimately  they  conceived  the  New  Testament 
as  related  to  the  Old,  the  less  could  they  allow  the  Person 
who  was  the  end  of  the  one  and  the  beginning  of  the  other 
to  remain  a Jew  or  be  regarded  as  a common  man.  The 
sacred  books  of  Israel  began  with  the  narrative  of  creation — 
God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  formed  all  creatures, 
breathed  the  breath  of  life  into  man  ; and  though  they 
became  a special  history  of  Israel,  it  was  only  that  they 
might  the  better  show  how  God  was  the  God  of  all.  So  the 
Evangelists,  in  relating  Jesus  through  history  to  Israel  and 
through  man  to  creation,  became,  as  it  w'ere,  bound  to  go 
forward  another  step,  and  relate  Him  to  God.  This  is  the 
mere  formal  logic  of  their  relations,  development  obeying 
its  own  immanent  laws.  They,  being  the  men  they  were, 
could  not  refuse  to  look  at  the  person  and  history  of  Christ 


340 


JOHN  READS  HISTORY  THROUGH  GOD, 


in  and  through  the  Eternal,  and  the  attempt  so  to  look  at 
Him  is  the  Gospel  of  John.  We  may  with  all  reverence 
describe  it  as  the  history  of  Jesus  read  as  a chapter  in  the 
life  of  God. 

The  distinguishing  feature,  then,  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  is 
this  : it  comes  to  Jesus  and  His  history  through  God.  But 
this  statement  needs  to  be  corrected  and  qualified  by  another — 
viz.,  the  distinguishing  feature  in  the  mind  of  the  Evangelist 
is  that  he  had  read  God  through  Jesus  before  he  attempted 
to  read  Jesus  through  God.  The  book  is  a history  written 
from  a standpoint  which  its  subject  Himself  had  supplied. 
In  the  author’s  conception  of  God  there  are  two  elements 
— the  one  proper  to  him  as  a Christian,  the  other  proper 
to  him  as  a Jew.  The  first,  which  he  owed  to  Jesus,  was 
the  idea  of  the  Son  ; the  second,  which  he  owed  to  the 
mind  and  history  of  his  people,  was  the  idea  of  the  Word. 
These  two  elements  gave  to  his  conception  of  God  all  its 
actuality  ; he  could  not  conceive  God  without  them,  or  them 
as  existing  apart  from  God.  Through  them  God  became 
to  him  a real,  an  active — in  a word,  a living  Being  ; through 
God  they  became  eternal,  the  cause  and  the  end  of  all 
things.  They  were  formally  differentiated,  but  materially 
identical,  modes  by  which  God  ceased  to  be  an  abstract 
simplicity  and  became  a concrete  and  manifold  energy  — 
as  it  were,  a realm  where  the  only  conditions  that  allow 
the  reason  and  emotion,  the  intellect  and  heart,  to  exist, 
were  essentially  existent  and  everlastingly  active  : the  con- 
ditions of  personal  distinctions  and  reciprocal  activity.  He 
came  to  these  distinctions  within  the  manifoldness  of  the 
Infinite  in  the  only  way  he  could  come — from  without,  through 
the  idea  of  Sonship  given  in  Christ  and  through  the  idea  of 
the  Word,  creative,  prophetic,  organizing,  given  in  the  sacred 
literature.  Each  term  was  a correlative  : Word  was  the  explicit 
and  articulated  reason  which  could  not  be  unless  there 
was  an  implicit  and  articulative  reason  ; Son  was  an  object 


GOD  THROUGH  THE  SON  AND  THE  WORD. 


341 


reflective  of  love  which  could  be  only  as  there  was  a Father 
or  subject  of  love  active  and  creative.  These  were  necessary 
to  full  and  absolute  or  perfect  being ; and  so,  if  God  were 
such  a being,  they  were  necessary  to  God.  Deity,  then,  in 
the  full  and  absolute  sense,  was  not  Father  without  Son 
or  Son  without  Father — for  neither  could  be  without  the 
other,  and  if  either  was  both  must  be.  Nor  was  He  Word 
without  Reason  or  Reason  without  Word — for  an  inarti- 
culated  reason  were  not  rational,  were  rather  a mere 
characterless  potentiality,  and  no  realized  actual  reason. 
But  He  was  these  as  so  related  and  so  exercised  in  their 
relations,  so  active  and  counteractive  in  their  modes  of 
being,  as  to  be  constitutive  of  a living  whole.  And  if  God 
has  outward  relations,  they  must,  from  the  very  nature  of 
the  case,  be  due  to  the  explicit  Reason  or  the  Word,  and 
the  objectified  Love  or  the  Son.  Only  through  these  can 
He  be  approached  from  without,  and  only  through  these 
can  what  is  within  God  become  outward,  constitute  a universe 
or  reach  a universe  already  constituted. 

B.  Christology. — Now,  through  his  notions  of  Word  and 
Son  John  binds  the  historical  Christ  to  the  eternal  God,  and 
through  Him  to  the  whole  field  of  His  creative  and  provi- 
dential action.  The  Word,  as  the  vehicle  and  organ  of  the 
immanent  reason,  is  the  Creator  and  Revealer  ; the  Son,  as 
the  object  and  medium  of  love,  is  the  Saviour  and  Healer. 
And  so  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Gospel  the  Word  creates — 
“all  things  were  made  by  Him”;  and  He  illuminates — is  “the 
light  of  men.”^  But  He  who  can  be  so  denoted  must  Him- 
self be  uncreated — therefore  eternal ; and  so  He  is  described  as 
existing  “ in  the  beginning  ” and  with  a self-sufficient  being,  for 
“in  Him  was  life.”^  The  Son  is  “the  Only  Begotten,”  whose 
home  is  “the  bosom  of  the  Father”^;  therefore  He  has  love 
as  the  medium  and  atmosphere  of  His  being.  But  as  “ God 
’ John  i.  3,  4.  ^ John  i.  2,  4.  ® John  i.  18. 


342 


THE  WORD  LIGHT,  THE  SON  LIFE. 


is  love,”'  the  conditions  of  love  must  belong  to  His  very 
essence — be  as  eternal  as  Himself.  And  so  the  Son  has  been 
“ from  the  beginning  ” ^ ; for  the  eternal  being  of  the  Son  and 
the  truth  “ God  is  love,”  are  only  the  concrete  and  the  abstract 
forms  of  the  same  idea.  The  process  or  method  by  which 
this  love  is  realized  for  man  is  the  Incarnation.  The  Word 
becomes  flesh  and  dwells  among  us,^  the  Life  which  was  with 
the  Father  is  manifested  unto  us,^  and  of  course  the  only 
possible  means  of  manifesting  life  is  by  means  of  a living 
Person.  The  Person  who  incarnates  the  eternal  love  or 
manifests  the  eternal  life  is  the  historical  Christ.  He  is,  as  it 
were,  the  Word  or  Son,  appearing  under  the  conditions  of 
created  existence  or  time  and  place,  in  order  to  the  eompletion 
of  His  work,  which,  while  capable  of  being  formally  dis- 
tinguished into  the  stages  or  processes  known  as  creation  and 
salvation,  is  yet  as  essentially  one  as  are  the  persons  of  the 
Creator  and  the  Saviour.  Christ  as  the  incarnate  Word  is  the 
light  of  men,  as  the  incarnate  Son  is  their  life.  As  the  first 
flis  symbol  is  the  tabernacle,  which  was  for  Israel  the  home 
of  the  visible  presence  ; as  the  second  He  has  the  features  of 
the  “ Only  Begotten  of  the  Father,”  grace  and  truth.®  In  His 
double  aspect  He  “declares  the  P'ather”® — i.e.^  as  one  who 
has  been  eternally  within  God  He  comes  to  those  who  are 
necessarily  without,  that  they  may  know  God  as  He  is  known 
from  within,  see  God  as  He  sees  Himself,  and  so  learn  to  love 
God  with  a godlike  love. 

Now,  the  history  is  written  as  a sort  of  commentary  on  the 
Prologue  ; and  so  has  a twofold  character — it  describes  a real 
which  represents  an  ideal  world.  In  it  history  and  thought 
become  a unity  without  losing  their  distinction.  The  forms 
and  categories  are  those  of  time  ; but  the  ideas,  which  are 
their  real  contents,  are  those  of  eternity.  And  thus  the 

^ I John  i.  2, 

* John  i.  14. 

® Jolin  i.  18. 


* I John  iv.  8. 

* I John  i.  I 
® Jolin  i.  14. 


THE  HISTORY  AN  ALLEGORY  AND  A SYMBOLISM.  343 


history  is  a sort  of  acted  parable,  whose  principle  or  idea  is 
stated  at  the  beginning  and  its  moral  at  the  end.  The  Fourth 
Gospel  is  quite  frank  as  to  its  purpose  ; it  is  written  in  order 
that  men  may  believe  “that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God.”^  And  to  the  historical  Person  the  author  does  not 
shrink  from  applying  the  highest  predicates  he  had  used  of 
the  Word  and  the  Son.  Thomas  recognizes  Him  with  the 
cry,  “ My  Lord  and  my  God  ! And  we  are  never  allowed 
to  forget  his  meaning  or  to  ignore  his  purpose.  His  book  is 
a work  of  rarest  art  ; it  is  a history,  a drama,  an  allegory^ 
a more  manifold  and  complex  symbolism  than  the  system 
so  lovingly  interpreted  in  Hebrews.  And  with  his  funda- 
mental idea  it  could  not  but  be  these  all  together  and  all 
at  once.  We  move  as  if  within  the  very  consciousness  of 
God  ; we  feel  His  love.  His  attitude  to  man.  His  sacrifice  to 
save  him.  We  see  Jesus  living  under  and  among  all  the 
most  terrible  and  sordid  conditions  of  space  and  time,  yet 
somehow  as  if  He  were  a being  of  eternity.  He  works 
miracles,  which  are,  while  sensuous  events,  all  symbols  of 
transcendental  truths.  He  lives  in  a world  which  is  only 
blind  and  crafty  Judaea,  but  yet  it  broadens  into  a universe 
where  light  and  darkness,  life  and  death,  wage  their  awful, 
unceasing  battle.  The  Jews  are  real  persons,  priests  and 
rulers  of  the  people,  but  they  are  no  less  embodied  ideas, 
organs  of  principles  ; darkness  and  hate  live  in  them  as  light 
and  love  in  Christ.  His  body  is  but  a mortal  thing  of  fiesh 
and  blood  ; but  it  becomes  a temple  which  men  destroy,^  but 
God  again  more  gloriously  builds, — a mystic  sacramental  food 
that  men  may  eat  and  live  for  ever^ ; a victim  that  cunning 
priests  do  to  death  for  their  own  safety,  but  God  transforms 
into  the  life  of  the  world.^  His  words  seem  to  be  but  occa- 
sional, drawn  from  Him  now  by  a guileless  seeker,®  now  by 


' John  XX.  31. 
* John  XX.  28. 
® John  ii.  19. 


* John  vi.  48-51. 
® John  xi.  49-52. 
® John  i.  49-51. 


344 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  ALLEGORY  AND  SYMBOL. 


a nightly  visitor/  now  by  a solitary  woman  void  of  good  yet 
hungry  for  it/  now  by  accusing  Jews,  now  by  curious  multi- 
tudes, now  by  trustful  yet  perplexed  disciples ; but  His 
audience  is  not  the  men  who  hear — it  is  mankind  ; the  world 
listens  by  looking,  for  its  light  has  come.^  His  death  seems 
to  be  the  victory  of  the  meanest  jealousies  and  the  most 
conflicting  hates, — priests  who  through  love  of  ruling  forget 
the  service  of  God  and  men  ; scribes  who  in  the  passion  for 
words  and  laws  lose  the  sense  of  right  and  the  love  of  truth  ; 
a people  unstable  as  water,  demanding  that  the  idol  of  one 
day  be  crucified  the  next  because  He  would  not  be  as  they 
were  ; the  judge  willing  to  be  unjust  where  his  master  was 
not  concerned,  or  ready  to  be  relentless  where  he  was.  But 
the  cross  was  not  like  these  its  makers,  nor  was  the  death  like 
these  its  authors  ; the  cross  was  the  world’s  altar,  and  the 
death  the  sacrifice  offered  once  for  all.  We  are  in  a world 
of  realities  where  yet  all  is  ideal  ; the  history  is  from  its  very 
nature  an  allegory,  for  it  means  that  God,  in  the  poor  vehicle 
of  a mortal  manhood,  is  accomplishing  His  most  characteristic 
work,  and  the  men  who  attempt  to  pervert  or  prevent  it 
only  the  more  contribute  to  its  accomplishment.  What  pro- 
ceeds in  time  belongs  to  eternity ; the  outward  event  is  the 
visible  symbol  of  what  is  innermost  in  the  Divine  nature 
and  ultimate  in  the  Divine  purpose  ; and  where  the  prosaic 
senses  perceive  but  the  men  of  a moment,  the  constructive 
imagination  reads  a parable  which  reveals  to  man  the  secret 
of  God. 

In  John,  then,  we  have  an  interpretation  of  the  Person 
expressed  in  the  terms  of  the  life  ; and  if  the  Person  was 
as  he  conceived  Him,  the  history  could  not  be  other  than  its 
interpretation.  The  real  was  not  indeed  the  counterpart  of 
the  ideal,  but  rather  its  symbolic  realization,  a thing  limited 
and  futile  to  him  who  could  not  see  the  spirit  for  the 

John  iii.  i if.  * John  iv.  7-26. 

® John  viii.  12. 


CHRISTOLOGY  PERSONAL  WHILE  SPECULATIVE.  345 

flesh,  but  a thing  of  infinite  meaning  to  him  who  saw  the 
flesh  transfigured  by  the  spirit.  So  construed,  we  may  say 
that  John’s  is,  while  the  most  speculative,  also  the  most 
personal  Christology  in  the  New  Testament.  It  is  distin- 
guished from  all  the  others  by  its  personal  character  ; its 
motive  is  a transcendent  enthusiasm  for  a person,  and  we 
may,  in  a sense,  name  it  the  apotheosis  of  love.  The 
theology  of  Paul  is  a theology  of  the  intellect.  He  loves 
persons  as  ideas.  Jesus  Christ  is  indeed  to  him  the 
supreme  historical  reality,  but  he  loves  as  he  honours 
Him  Kara  irvedfia,  and  not  Kara  adp/ca}  He  glories  in 
the  cross,  but  it  is  even  more  the  cross  of  idea  and  doctrine 
than  of  fact  and  history.  Without  the  fact  and  history  the 
idea  and  doctrine  could  not  have  been,  and  would  not  be ; 
but  his  immediate  consciousness  is  of  the  ideal  cross,  which 
has  interpreted,  transfigured,  and  glorified  the  real.  With  it  his 
associations  are  more  those  of  thought  than  those  of  experience 
and  sense.  He  has  seen  the  cross  through  the  Resurrection  ; 
he  has  not  known  what  it  was  to  watch  it  ringed  with  fanatic 
hate  and  with  no  background  but  death.  He  lives  for  Christ ; 
but  his  Christ  is  not  one  whose  historical  form  so  dwells  in 
memory  and  is  so  beautiful  to  imagination  that  he  feels  the  very 
place  of  His  feet  to  be  glorious,  all  the  more  that  over  it 
fall  the  shadows  cast  by  the  dismal  surrounding  night.  As 
with  Paul,  so  with  Hebrews.  Christ  is  to  him  the  Arche- 
type, the  Antitype,  the  Son,  the  High  Priest,  the  symbol 
of  the  most  exalted  idea  ; but  He  is  not  Jesus,  handled 
with  the  fondness  of  a love  made  tender  by  memory  and 
sweet  by  hope.  In  John  all  is  different;  his  is  the  theology 
of  the  heart ; the  terms  in  which  it  is  unfolded  are  those 
of  the  most  real,  immediate,  and  reminiscent,  yet  living  love. 
And  so  his  speculation  is  all  personal  : the  Person  is  never 
lost  in  the  idea,  the  idea  is  ever  incarnated  in  the  Person. 
When  he  speaks  in  the  Epistle,  it  is  as  one  to  whom  love  is  life; 

^ 2 Cor.  V.  16. 


346 


JESUS  A SUPERNATURAL  PERSON, 


when  he  speaks  in  the  Gospel,  it  is  as  one  for  whom  the  love 
has  lived.  For  him  the  ideals  of  God  have  been  clothed  in 
flesh  ; and  in  the  process  the  flesh  has  not  made  the  ideals 
gross,  but  the  ideals  have  made  the  flesh  divine  and  glorious. 
And  thus  the  abstract  terms,  Word,  Light,  Life,  Spirit,  are 
not  abstract  to  him ; they  have  all  a mystic  personal 
quality;  out  of  them  looks  the  face  of  Jesus,  and  His  look 
is  love.  And  so  it  was  ^but  natural  that  the  history  should 
be  to  John  most  real  where  it  was  most  symbolical.  Christ 
was  to  him  in  very  truth  the  Son  of  God,  and  God  in 
very  truth  the  Father  of  Jesus  Christ.  And  he  so  read  the 
P'athcr  he  had  not  seen  through  the  Son  he  had  known, 
that  eternity  was  but  life  with  the  Son  made  infinite. 

§ III. — The  Ideal  Person  and  the  Real  History. 

But  now  we  come  to  our  second  question  : How  do  the 
Evangelists  correlate  the  Person  they  so  conceive  and  the  his- 
tory they  write?  How  do  they  reconcile  His  ideal  with  His 
actual  being?  Perhaps  the  truest  reply  would  be.  They  do 
not  feel  that  there  is  anything  to  reconcile.  It  was  in  and 
through  His  history  that  they  found  the  ideal ; and  as  it 
was  most  ideal  where  most  real — viz.,  in  the  Passion — they 
were  content  to  speak  as  witnesses,  leaving  the  task  of 
conciliation  to  those  who  felt  it  to  be  necessary.  But  it 
may  help  us  to  understand  their  mind  the  better  if  we 
attempt  to  interpret  this,  as  it  were,  sub-conscious  element 
of  their  thought.  The  positions  to  be  correlated  are  these  : — 

I.  Jesus  is  to  all  the  Evangelists  a supernatural  Person.  He 
is  so  altogether  apart  from  any  question  as  to  the  specific 
mode  of  His  coming.  The  narratives  of  the  Nativity  are 
peculiar  to  Matthew  and  Luke.  Mark  says  nothing  as  to 
His  birth,  though  he  knows  Mary  as  His  mother.^  Nor  does 
John,  though  he  twice  alludes  to  Joseph  as  His  father,^  and 
* Mark  vi.  3.  * John  i.  45,  vi.  42. 


YET  NORMAL  HUMAN  BEING. 


347 


makes  His  relation  to  His  mother  mueh  more  filial,  and  so 
more  natural,  than  any  of  the  other  Evangelists.^  He  is  super- 
natural simply  beeause  of  what  they  have  found  in  Him, 
beeause  He  is  to  them  the  foretold  and  expected  Messiah, 
the  Son  of  God  and  King  of  Israel.  They  differ  in  their  dis- 
cernment and  appreciation  of  what  this  belief  involves,  but 
not  in  the  fact  or  matter  of  the  belief.  Mark  may  show  us  it 
in  its  empirical  form,  and  John  in  its  most  speculative  and 
developed,  but  John’s  faith  in  Jesus  as  the  Messiah  is  no 
stronger  or  more  real  than  Mark's.  And  this  means  that 
He  is  to  both  a person  who  transcends  the  order  of  nature, 
one  whose  very  being  is  miraculous. 

2.  As  miraculous  in  person,  so  He  is  miraculous  in  act.  In 
all  the  Gospels  He  heals  diseases,  casts  out  devils,  feeds  the 
multitudes,  raises  the  dead,  and  is  raised  from  the  dead. 
These  acts  correspond  to  His  nature  as  they  have  conceived  it ; 
the  natural  action  of  the  miraculous  Person  is  the  miracle.  In 
the  degree  that  He  Himself  transcends  nature,  it  is  but  normal 
that  His  acts  should  do  the  same.  So  far  forth,  then,  as  the 
Person  who  is  a miracle  works  miracles,  the  conception  may 
be  said  to  be  coherent ; there  is  at  least,  as  between  its  two 
parts,  a certain  logical  consistency. 

3.  This  supernatural  Jesus  exhibits  in  His  own  person  all 
the  phenomena  natural  to  the  normal  human  being.  On 
this  point  the  Evangelists  are  all  equally  explicit  ; if  there  is 
any  difference,  John  may  be  said  to  be  the  most  explicit  of  all. 
Jesus  is  born  and  grows  ; has  senses  and  sensuous  experiences  ; 
has  parents  who  chide  Him,  because,  childlike.  He  leaves 
them  and  forgets  in  His  own  interests  their  sorrows.  He 
grows  in  mind  as  in  body,  in  wisdom  as  in  knowledge.^ 
He  suffers  hunger,  thirst,  weariness.  He  experiences  joy, 

^ John  ii.  3-5,  xix.  25-27. 

2 It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  the  Evangelist  who  emphasizes  this  growth 
(Luke  ii.  40-52,)  is  also  the  only  one  who  applies  to  the  historical  Jesus 
the  name  proper  to  the  exalted  Christ:  6 Kvpms  (Luke  vii.  13). 


34S  HOW  ARE  PERSON  AND  MIRACLES  RELATED? 

pain,  anguish,  pity,  and  inner  trouble.  He  weeps.  He 
is  tempted,  has  to  struggle  under  suffering.  Mental  is  at- 
tended with  bodily  pain,  death  with  physical  anguish, — the 
shedding  of  His  blood  and  the  breaking  of  His  heart.  These 
facts  are  not  concealed,  nor  is  there  any  sense  that  they  need 
concealment ; for  there  is  no  feeling  that  they  are  in  any  way 
inconsistent  with  the  conception  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ.  On 
the  contrary,  the  writers  feel  as  if  these  things  were  in 
the  highest  degree  consonant  with  their  conception  of  Him. 
He  is  not  the  less  but  the  more  the  Messiah  that  He  suffers, 
not  the  less  but  the  more  a Saviour  that  He  dies.  And  so 
they  narrate  in  the  simplest  way,  as  if  both  classes  of 
phenomena  were  equally  in  harmony  with  their  subject,  the 
acts  in  which  He  transcended  nature  and  the  sufferings 
and  fatalities  which  show  Him  under  it.  Yet  they  were  not 
unconscious  of  the  difficulty,  for  they  themselves  had  ex- 
perienced it  in  the  acutest  possible  form.  They  had  assumed 
that  He  would  do  other  than  He  did  ; and  when  He  did  not 
as  they  expected,  some  doubted,  and  some  even  fell  away.  If 
with  this  keen  sense  of  the  contradiction  between  His  trans- 
cendental person  and  His  actual  experiences  they  yet  write  as 
they  do,  we  have  here  evidence  of  two  things— first,  of  the 
simple-minded  veracity  which  is  incapable  of  concealment,  and, 
secondly,  that  they  had  reached  a point  of  view  where  the 
contradiction  had  for  themselves  not  only  ceased,  but  become 
a testimony  to  His  truth  and  reality.  They  looked  at  the  matter 
through  the  Person  they  described;  they  did  not  look  at  Him 
through  a nature  science  has  interpreted  and  defined.  To  them 
He  was  both  nature  and  law,  but  to  us  nature  tends  to  become 
a law  to  Him.  If  we  can  reach  their  point  of  view,  we  may  be 
the  better  able  to  construe  both  their  idea  and  their  history. 

A.  Now,  in  their  view  Jesus  was  at  once  a single  and 
a universal  person  ; His  being  could  be  construed  through 
the  nature  and  from  the  side  of  man,  or  through  the  nature 


WHAT  MEANETH  THE  TEMPTATION? 


349 


and  from  the  side  of  God.  But  these  were  so  related  that 
what  was  possible  to  Him  as  the  second  depended  on  what 
He  was  as  the  first.  The  Messiah  could  not  be  without 
the  man,  and  the  man  must  be  what  all  men  are  to  be  man 
at  all.  On  no  basis  but  a natural  could  the  supernatural 
be  built.  Of  course  this  natural  was  made  of  God  ; it  was 
sinless,  as  it  were  the  veritable  manhood  God  imagined. 
But  Christ’s  moral  was  not  so  conceived  as  to  involve  and 
assert  His  physical  transcendence,  but  rather  His  obligation 
to  remain  in  our  limited  and  normal  human  state.  This 
is  distinctly  the  idea  conveyed  in  the  important  initial  inci- 
dent known  to  all  the  Synoptics^ — the  Temptation..  We 
can  hardly  be  wrong  in  construing  this  as  even  more  an 
allegory  than  an  event,  and  the  more  real  it  is  made  the 

more  allegorical  will  it  become.  It  stands  between  the 

Baptism  and  the  Ministry,  which  means,  He  to  whom 
the  Messianic  consciousness  has  come  must  be  proved  in 
order  that  He  may  be  approved.  The  Baptism  denotes  the 
Person,  the  Temptation  tests  His  capabilities,  and  it  is  as  the 
selected  and  the  tested  that  He  begins  His  ministry. 

We  can  only  mean  by  the  reality  of  the  Temptation  that 

Jesus  was  really  tempted.  It  was  not  a drama  of  which  He 

was  a spectator,  but  a tragedy  whose  stage  was  His  own  soul. 
Each  act  in  it  cost  struggle,  agony,  and  sweat  of  spirit,  as  in 
every  conflict  of  sense  and  conscience,  reason  and  will.  But 
it  is  evident  from  the  terms  which  describe  the  event  that  it 
had  to  do  not  with  the  weaknesses  common  to  man,  but  with 
Himself  and  His  vocation,  the  work  He  was  called  to  do, 
what  He  must  be  to  do  it,  and  how  or  under  what  modes  it  was 
to  be  done.  We  must  read  its  reason  in  the  place  it  holds  and 
the  forms  it  assumes.  He  was  no  son  of  the  synagogue 
or  the  Temple,  no  pupil  of  the  scribes  or  novice  of  the 

^ Matt.  iv.  i-ii;  Luke  iv.  I-13;  Mark  i.  12,  13.  The  text  follows  the 
narrative  of  Matthew.  Cf.  my  “ Studies  in  the  Life  ot  Christ,”  pp.  80-98  ; 
Wendt,  “ Die  Lehre  Jesu,”  vol.  ii.,  pp.  69  ff.  (Eng.  trans.,  vol.  i.,  pp.  loi  ff.). 


350 


JESUS  AND  THE  TRADITIONAL  MESSIAH. 


priesthood  ; His  way  had  been  His  own  ; He  was  the  supreme 
example  of  those  men  call  the  self-taught,  often  because  they 
have  no  other  term  by  which  to  denote  the  taught  of  God. 
But  there  were  traditional  ideas  of  the  Messiah  and  His  king- 
dom— ideas  that  had  worked  themselves  into  the  spiritual  blood 
and  bone  of  Israel ; and  He  could  not  be  what  He  was  and 
stand  where  He  did  without  feeling  their  presence  and  their 
power.  When,  then.  His  vocation  came  in  the  Baptism,  and 
the  mysterious  Spirit  within  Him  stood  up  in  face  of  His 
predestined  mission,  He  was,  as  it  were,  forced  into  the  conflict 
or  pursued  by  the  problems  which  we  call  the  Temptation  : — 
How  .are  the  person  and  the  mission,  Jesus  and  the  Christ, 
related  ? In  what  form  is  the  Messiah  to  appear  ? Under  what 
conditions  must  He  do  His  work  ? What  truth  is  there  in  the 
traditional  idea  ? How  far  can  it  be  used  by  the  transcendental 
and  incorporated  with  it?  It  is  through  questions  such  as 
these  that  the  Temptation  must  be  understood:  without  them, 
the  tempter  could  have  had  no  part  to  play  ; with  them,  he 
played  his  part  so  well  as  to  make  the  struggle  the  tragic 
reality  it  was. 

So  understood,  then,  the  Temptation  represents  the  conflict 
through  which  the  Saviour  passed  relative  to  Himself  and  His 
ministry,  or  concerning  His  person  in  relation  to  His  work. 
From  this  point  of  view  let  us  try  to  read  its  meaning. 

(a)  The  first  temptation  was  the  making  of  stones  into  bread. 
He  was  “ an  hungred,”  and  was  invited  to  work  a miracle 
in  order  to  satisfy  His  hunger.  To  what  was  He  tempted  ? 
To  the  exercise  of  miraculous  powers  for  personal  ends.  It 
implied  the  being  of  such  powers,  the  capability  of  using  them 
for  such  an  end,  the  occasion  for  such  use  in  physical  hunger, 
and  the  justification  for  their  use  in  saving  from  the  hunger 
and  its  possible  issue  in  death.  But  to  have  yielded  and 
used  the  power  would  have  lifted  the  Person  out  of  the 
category  of  humanity,  placed  Him  above  rather  than  under 
nature,  made  the  kinship  and  obedience  and  fatalities  of 


THE  SON  AND  SATAN. 


351 


manhood  impossible  to  Him — in  a word,  as  a being  of  another 
order  and  another  system,  He  would  have  been  completely 
divorced  from  man.  Hence  the  trial  meant,  whether  He  was 
to  be  for  Himself  as  a person  filling  the  office  and  doing  the 
work  of  Messiah,  altogether  as  a man,  under  nature  with  all 
its  limitations  and  all  its  disabilities,  under  law  with  all  its 
obligations  and  all  its  responsibilities.  Jesus  was  victorious 
because  He  refused  to  emancipate  Himself  from  law,  or  to 
live  otherwise  than  as  under  the  conditions  common  to  man. 

(/3)  In  the  second  temptation  He  was  invited  to  cast  Him- 
self down  from  the  pinnacle  of  the  Temple.  What  was  its 
essence?  The  claim  to  special  conservation  and  care  from 
God.  It  signified  that  the  Person  had  so  peculiar  relations 
and  was  of  such  peculiar  value  to  God,  that  He  could,  because 
of  these,  make  extraordinary  ventures  beyond  the  natural,  that 
He  ought  to  do  what  He  could,  and  appear  before  men  as 
the  One  miraculously  guarded  of  God.  The  second  was 
thus  the  exact  converse  of  the  first ; it  tempted  to  such 
dependence  on  God  as  no  common  man  could  know.  If 
this  had  succeeded,  it  too  would  have  separated  Him  from 
man  ; and  its  failure  meant,  that  Jesus,  while  doing  His  work, 
was  to  claim  from  God  nothing  for  Himself  that  should 
exempt  Him  from  our  common  human  lot  and  liabilities. 
There  was  to  be  for  Him  no  special  intervention,  no  exclusive 
providence,  nothing  that  marked  Him  as  the  solitary  care  and 
single  love  of  Heaven.  He  was  to  take  His  place  in  the 
ranks  of  men,  live  as  they  lived,  under  the  same  conditions, 
sons  of  the  one  Father,  brothers  in  dependence  on  God  as  on 
nature ; and  if  He  did  a greater  work  than  any  other.  He  was 
still  to  do  it  not  as  made  of  God  independent  of  law,  but  as 
like  man  bound  to  all  obedience. 

(7)  The  third  temptation  was,  as  it  were,  the  other  two 
reduced  by  a synthesis  to  a subtler  and  more  attractive  form. 
He  was  to  receive  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  if  He  would 
worship  the  power  which  was  their  master — /.a.  He  was  not 


352 


FOR  ALL  ENDS  PERSONAL  TO  HIMSELF. 


to  take  the  way  of  obedience,  but  of  force  and  self-will.  The 
question  was,  whether  He  would  emancipate  Himself  from  God 
and  take  the  matter  into  His  own  hands,  or  leave  Himself  in 
God’s  keeping  to  do  it  in  God’s  way.  His  victory  means  that 
His  work  is  one  of  obedience,  that  obedience  is  the  method 
all  through,  and  in  order  to  it  all  the  ends  and  all  the  ways 
must  be  God’s,  but  all  the  acts  and  all  the  endurance  the  free 
choices  of  man.  He  who  would  be  IMessiah  must  be  perfect 
man  ; the  manhood  broken  from  below  by  sin,  or  from  above 
by  the  exercise  of  miiraculous  powers  or  the  claim  of  a special 
Providence  for  any  end  of  the  Person — both  of  which  would 
only  be  another  form  of  sin — would  be  a manhood  incapable 
of  the  Messianic  office  or  its  essential  work.  The  humanity 
of  the  Saviour  must  be  absolutely  real. 

Now,  the  idea  expressed  in  these  real  yet  allegorical  inci- 
dents is  this  : the  terms  under  which  Christ  lived  Plis  life  were 
those  of  our  common  non-miraculous  humanity.  We  know 
no  other.  To  be  perfect  and  whole  man  must  mean  that 
as  regards  whatever  is  proper  to  manhood  He  is  man, 
and  not  something  else.  Hence  the  emphasis  which  writers 
like  Paul  and  the  author  of  Hebrews  lay  upon  His  “ being 
found  in  fashion  as  a man,”  so  constituted  that  He  was 
the  First-born  Brother,  made  like  unto  His  brethren  in  all 
things,  except  sin.  The  Synoptics,  without  formulating  the 
idea,  express  it  in  the  strongest  possible  way — they  represent 
Christ  as  doing  His  work  within  the  terms  and  under  the 
conditions  of  normal  manhood.  His  supernatural  powers  are 
for  others,  not  for  Himself.  He  performs  no  single  self- 
regarding  miracle.  The  priests  mocked  Him  because,  while 
He  saved  others.  He  did  not  save  Himself^;  and  we  may  add. 
He  could  not  both  save  Himself  and  be  Himself.  What  had 
made  Him  in  so  supreme  a personal  act  cease  to  be  man 
would  have  deprived  the  act  of  its  special  character.  The 
physical  limitations  really  represent  the  transcendent  obliga- 

^ Matt,  xxvii.  42. 


HIS  HUMANITY  NON-MIRACULOUS. 


353 


tions  imposed  by  His  work  upon  His  will.  What  only  a man 
could  do  remained  undone  unless  a man  did  it ; and  so  the 
manhood  must  be  real  that  the  sacrifice  may  be  the  same.  And 
this  principle  is  far-reaching ; upon  it  depends  the  reality  of 
the  Person  and  His  history.  Whatever  touches  either  touches 
both.  If  Christ  in  His  historical  life  be  conceived  as  a con- 
scious God  who  lives  and  speaks  like  a limited  man,  then 
the  worst  of  all  forms  of  docetism  is  affirmed.  P'or  it  is  one 
that  dissolves  Him  into  infinite  unreality.  If  He  knows  as 
God  while  He  speaks  as  man,  then  His  speech  is  not  true 
to  His  knowledge,  and  within  Him  a bewildering  struggle 
must  ever  proceed  to  speak  as  He  seems,  and  not  as  He 
is.^  If  He  had  such  knowledge,  how  could  He  remain  silent 
as  He  faced  human  ignorance  and  saw  reason  wearied  with 
the  burden  of  all  its  unintelligible  mysteries  ? If  men  could 
believe  that  once  there  lived  upon  this  earth  One  who  had 
all  the  knowledge  of  God,  yet  declined  to  turn  any  part  of 
it  into  science  for  man,  would  they  not  feel  their  faith  in 
His  goodness  taxed  beyond  endurance  ? Is  not  much  of 
the  modern  impatience  of  theology  a just  Nemesis  upon 
systems  that  have  in  this  matter  wronged  Him  they 
professed  to  interpret  ? Had  the  simple  method  of  the. 
Evangelists  been  followed,  these  difficulties  would  have  been 
unknown.  Christ’s  humanity  was  as  regards  the  actions 
and  ends  proper  to  it  as  a humanity  altogether  normal, 
and  so  non-miraculous,  subject  to  all  the  limitations  and 
liabilities  of  the  common  lot.  To  conceive  Him  alike  in 
relation  to  nature  or  to  God  as  other  than  His  brethren, 
is  to  misread  the  lesson  of  the  Temptation,  and  so  the  whole 
meaning  of  His  person  and  work. 

^ Christ  recognizes  the  limitations  of  His  own  knowledge  (Mark  xiii. 
32  : cf.  xiv.  35,  36).  He  knew,  indeed,  what  was  in  man  (John  ii.  25  : cf. 
Matt.  ix.  4 ; Luke  v.  22 ; Matt.  xii.  25  ; Luke  xi.  17).  But  this  was  the  note 
of  the  prophet  (Luke  vii.  39).  There  were  things  in  man,  too,  that  sur- 
prised Him  (Mark  vi.  6;  Matt.  viii.  10);  so  in  nature  (Mark  xi.  13). 

23 


354 


BUT  THE  UNIVERSAL  IS  A PERSON 


B.  But  the  single  was  also  a universal  Person,  and  had 
as  such  a mission  altogether  supernatural  because  altogether 
of  God.  It  could  be  fulfilled  only  by  one  whose  nature 
was  human,  but  it  could  not  be  humanly  fulfilled.  He  must 
by  means  of  nature  be  the  fit  person,  but  He  could  only 
by  means  of  God  do  the  fit  work.  His  coming  was,  as  it 
were,  built  into  history,  belonged  to  the  design  and  action 
of  God.  For  it  Providence  had  ruled,  prophecy  prepared, 
elect  men  lived  and  died.  To  it  all  the  earlier  ages  had 
moved  ; out  of  it  all  the  later  ages  were  to  proceed.  We 
must  therefore  make  a distinction  : there  was  a normal 
manhood,  but  a supernatural  function,  and  the  function  was 
made  possible  by  two  things — the  quality  of  the  manhood 
and  the  quantity  of  the  Divine  action.  The  quality  of  the 
manhood  we  have  seen,  but  the  significance  of  the  action  is 
what  we  have  now  to  sec.  It  could  not  proceed  on  the  broad 
field  of  history,  and  never  touch  the  special  Person — nay,  it 
must  have  been  in  relation  to  Him  that  it  reached  its  acutest 
point.  We  may  describe  this  point  in  the  terms  of  John, 
“The  Word  became  fiesh  ” ^ ; or  in  those  of  Luke,  “The 
holy  thing  which  is  to  be  born  shall  be  called  the  Son  of 
God  ” ^ ; or  in  those  of  theology,  “ God  became  incarnate  in 
Christ.”  But  what  to  the  Evangelists  did  incarnation  mean  ? 
It  meant  the  coming  to  be  not  of  a Godhead,  but  of  a 
manhood.  Its  specific  result  was  a human,  not  a Divine, 
person,  whose  humanity  was  all  the  more  real  that  it  was 
voluntary  or  spontaneous,  all  the  more  natural  that  God 
rather  than  man  had  to  do  with  its  making.  To  the  Evangelists 
the  most  miraculous  thing  in  Christ  was  His  determination  not 
to  be  miraculous,  but  to  live  our  ordinary  life  amidst  struggles 
and  in  the  face  of  temptations  that  never  ceased.^  One  prin- 
ciple ruled  throughout  : the  motives  that  governed  the  Divine 
conduct  governed  also  the  human.  This  principle  and  these 
^ John  i.  14.  ^ Luke  i.  35. 


Luke  iv.  3,  xxii.  28. 


SUPERNATURAL  TO  MAN,  THOUGH  NATURAL  TO  GOD.  355 

motives  may  be  described  as  the  law  of  sacrifice.  The  Father 
denied  Himself  in  giving  the  Son  ; the  Son  denied  Himself 
in  becoming  man  and  in  living  as  the  man  He  had  become. 
Looking  up  from  below,  it  was  all  one  infinite  kenosis  \ 
looking  down  from  above,  it  was  all  one  infinite  sacrifice. 
But  kenosis  and  sacrifice  alike  meant  that,  while  He  assumed 
the  fashion  of  the  man  and  the  form  of  the  servant,  both 
the  manhood  and  the  servitude,  in  order  to  either  having  any 
significance,  had  to  be  as  real  as  the  Godhead  and  the 
sovereignty. 

Hence  Christ  was  to  the  Evangelists  at  once  normal  man 
and  supernatural  person — the  former  in  all  that  pertained  to 
His  personal  existence  and  relations,  the  latter  in  all  that  con- 
cerned His  work.  The  whole  region  in  which  this  work  lived 
and  moved  was  the  natural  of  God,  but  the  supernatural 
of  man.  All  that  was  done  was  of  God  and  befitted  God. 
He  lived,  as  it  were,  in  visible  presence  and  audible  voice 
upon  the  earth.  The  truth  Christ  revealed  was  not  man’s, 
but  God’s.  The  love  that  abode  in  Him  was  Divine.  The 
life  in  Him  was  the  uncreated  yet  creative  life.  And  so, 
when  He  acted  not  for  Himself,  but  as  the  called  of  God,^ 
His  acts  were  naturally  supernatural.  His  work  was  a unity, 
miraculous  not  at  one  point  or  in  one  thing,  but  in  all 
things  and  at  all  points.  The  miracle  was  the  normal  speech 
of  His  will  ; the  right  to  forgive  sin  had  as  its  correlate  the 
power  to  heal.  His  words  and  person  have  acted  like  miracles 
in  history.  His  miraculous  power  is  illocal  and  universal. 
The  normal  manhood  had  its  home  in  Judaea  and  its  history 
written  by  the  Evangelists  ; but  the  supernatural  Person  has 
no  home,  lives  through  all  time,  acts  on  and  in  all  mankind. 

The  miracle,  then,  does  not  belong  to  the  region  of  His' 
personal  being,  but  of  His  official  activity.  And  here  it  is 
essential  and  integral.  Hence  we  may  note  three  characteristic 
facts.  First,  since  He  is  as  Founder  of  the  kingdom  super- 

^ Pleb.  V.  10. 


356 


MIRACLES  AND  THE  KINGDOM. 


natural,  all  His  acts  are  here  of  a piece,  and  all  of  God. 
Miracle  and  speech,  preaching  and  healing,  cleansing  and 
curing  men,  are  signs  of  the  kingdom.^  Apart  from  it 
they  cannot  be  ; within  it  they  are  in  place  and  have  a 
function.  They  are  co-ordinate  and  correlative,  express  one 
energy  in  Him,  aim  at  one  result  for  man.  Secondly,  the 
conditions  of  physical  help  are  spiritual  ^ ; what  qualifies 
a man  to  be  forgiven  qualifies  him  for  healing ; and  all 
physical  help  is  spiritual  good.  The  miracle  is  a voice, 
a witness,  a preacher  warning  men  to  repent^;  the  Word 
is  a miracle,  a spirit  that  quickeneth.^  Thirdly,  what  they 
speak  of  is  God,  the  Divine,  the  presence  of  the  creative  will, 
now  the  re-creative,  on  earth.® 

We  may  say,  then,  the  miraculous  Person  is  the  Person  in 
His  office,  at  His  w'ork,  standing  in  His  peculiar  relations  to 
God.  Apart  from  these,  living  the  personal  life.  He  is  the 
normal  man  ; within  these  He  is  the  Christ  of  God.  It  is 
here,  if  such  an  image  may  be  allowed,  as  in  our  English 
commonwealth.  There  can  be  no  sovereign  without  the 
person,  but  the  person  is  not  the  sovereign.  Office  and  person 
are  so  mutually  necessary  that  neither  can  be  without  the 
other.  But  the  person  within  the  office  is  not  as  the  person 
without  it.  Without  it  she  is  but  a mortal  woman,  with  all  the 
characteristics  of  her  kind  ; but  within  it  she  becomes  the 
sovereign  who  can  do  no  wrong,  the  source  of  law  and  justice, 
filling  and,  as  it  were,  possessing  the  high  court  of  Parliament, 
clothed  upon  with  the  authorities  and  the  prerogatives  proper 
to  the  head  of  a great  state.  With  Christ  we  cannot  now 

^ Matt.  xi.  5 ; Luke  iv.  18-21,  xiii.  32. 

2 Matt.  viii.  10,  13  ; Mark  i.  40,  v.  36,  vi.  5. 

® Matt.  xi.  21  ; Luke  x.  13  ; John  v.  36,  x.  25,  32,  37. 

^ John  vi.  63. 

John  viii.  28,  xiv.  10;  cf.  Luke  v.  17,  ix.  43,  xvii.  15-18;  Matt.  ix.  8, 
XV.  31.  It  is  therefore  Christ’s  own  doctrine  that  His  miracles  witness 
not  to  something  peculiar  in  His  own  humanity,  but  to  the  power  of  God 
(Mark  v.  19,  vii.  34;  Matt.  xii.  28,  xiv.  19;  Luke  xi.  20). 


MESSIAHSHIP  THROUGH  DISCIPLINE. 


357 


separate  office  and  person,  for  these  are  fused  into  one.  But 
the  standpoint  of  the  Evangelists  was  not  our.s.  We  know 
the  accomplished  fact,  but  they  saw  the  process  of  accom- 
plishment. And  the  process  is  reflected  in  their  histories. 
The  vocation  to  the  Messiahship  did  not  come  till  the  Person 
had  been  disciplined  and  qualified.  In  the  period  of  ob- 
scurity and  preparation  the  large  prerogatives  of  the  end 
were  not  His.  It  was  only  when  the  suffering  was  past 
and  the  right  hand  of  the  Father  won,  that  the  Son  be- 
came an  object  of  worship,  possessed  of  all  power  in  heaven 
and  on  earth,  able  to  promise  His  eternal  presence  to  His 
people.^ 


* Matt,  xxviii.  9,  17,  18. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  CHRISTOLOGY  OF  CHRIST, 

But  how  do  these  varied  interpretations  of  His  person 
stand  related  to  the  teachings  of  Christ  Himself?  Have 
they  any  reason  or  justification  in  any  words  or  claims  of  His  ? 
Is  He  their  creator  or  only  their  occasipn  ? In  other  words, 
how  did  Jesus  conceive  Himself? 

§ I. — Significance  of  His  Names. 

A.  The  Christ. — Jesus  is  to  Himself  from  the  Baptism 
onwards  the  Messiah.  He  begins  His  ministry  by  a con- 
fession of  faith  : in  Him  prophecy  is  fulfilled,  the  Spirit  oi 
the  Lord  is  upon  Him,  and  He  is  anointed  to  preach  the 
Gospel  to  the  poor.^  He  does  the  works  of  the  Messiah, 
and  to  confess  Him  is  to  be  blessed.^  He  institutes  by  His 
preaching  the  Messianic  kingdom,  and  He  allows  Himself 
to  be  saluted  as  the  Messianic  King.^  In  the  presence  of 
the  chief  priest  and  in  answer  to  his  solemn  abjuration  He 
declares  Himself  the  ChrisH  But  in  taking  the  name 
He  changed  the  idea,  and  by  means  of  a most  significant 
question  He  emphasized  the  change.  How  do  the  scribes 
conceive  the  Christ  ?®  “ As  David’s  son,”  they  said  ; and  they 

meant  that  to  be  his  son  was  to  be  not  simply  his  descendant, 

^ Luke  iv.  16-21.  ^ Matt.  ix.  27  ; Mark  x.  47-49  5 Luke  xviii.  39,  40. 

2 Matt,  xi,  1-6.  ^ Mark  xiv.  61,  62  ; cf.  Matt.  xvi.  16,  20. 

®Matt.  xxii.  41-46;  Mark  xii.  35-37.  Cf.  Wendt’s  “Lehre  Jesu,”  ii.  436  ff. 
(Eng.  trans.,  ii.  133  tf.). 


WHAT  JESUS  MEANS  BY  HIS  NAMES. 


359 


but  altogether  like  him,  a king  after  his  kind  in  a kingdom 
such  as  his.  But  Jesus  asks,  “ How,  then,  does  David  in  spirit 
call  Him  Lord?  ” and  He  means  : “ My  view  of  the  Messiah 
is  exactly  the  reverse  of  yours  ; to  you  the  main  thing  is  the 
Davidic  sonship,  to  David  it  was  the  lordship.  The  lordship 
signified  a relation  to  God,  which  you  forget ; but  the  sonship, 
which  you  remember,  involved  a relation  to  David  that  may 
be  interesting,  but  is  not  vital,  and  hardly  significant.” 

The  change  Jesus  effected  in  the  Messianic  idea  was 
parallel  to  the  change  He  effected  in  the  theistic,  and  the 
two  must  be  taken  together  before  either  can  be  understood. 
Neither  idea  could  have  been  without  Judaism,  but  neither 
the  God  nor  the  Messiah  of  Jesus  was  of  the  Jews.  The 
element  He  introduced  was  the  most  distinctive  and  con- 
stitutive in  His  thought,  and  may  be  described  as  on 
the  one  side  the  paternal,  on  the  other  the  filial, — these 
terms  being  strictly  inseparable  and  correlative,  affecting 
both  the  Messianic  and  the  theistic  idea.  As  regards  the 
former,  it  had  a twofold  form — a God  ward  and  a man  ward ; 
the  Messiah  was  Son  of  God  and  Son  of  man,  and  each 
in  such  a sense  that  it  involved  the  other. 

B,  The  Son  of  God. — This  phrase  had  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment a sort  of  official  sense.  It  denoted  collective  Israel,  the 
son  because  the  elect  of  God.^  It  denoted,  too,  the  Messiah, 
the  theocratic  King,^  who  was  in  a special  sense  the  creation 
and  care  of  God,  but  it  was  an  official  title  rather  than  a 
proper  name,  applied  to  the  King  as  distinguished  from  the 
man.  There  are  traces  of  this  meaning  in  the  Gospels. 
Satan  uses  it  in  the  Temptation^ ; so  do  the  evil  spirits  when 
they  are  cast  out  ^ ; so  do  the  disciples  in  the  ship  after  the 

* Dent.  xiv.  I,  2;  Exod.  iv.  22;  Hos.  xi.  i;  Isa.  Ixiii.  16;  Jer.  xxxi.  9, 
20  ; Mai.  i.  6. 

2 2 Sam.  vii.  14;  Psalm  ii.  7,  8.  * Matt.  viii.  29;  Luke  viii.  28. 

3 Matt.  iv.  3 ; Luke  iv.  3,  9. 


360 


THE  SON  OF  GOD 


calming  of  the  storm.'  The  usage  of  the  centurion,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  pagan  rather  than  Jewish.^  But  it  is  remarkable 
that  in  the  Synoptics  Jesus  never  uses  this  title  ; and  His 
careful  avoidance  can  only  be  explained  by  His  aversion  to 
its  official  sense.®  With  Him  the  personal  relation  was 
primary,  the  official  secondary,  and  He  would  not  use  a name 
which  could  be  understood  of  an  office,  but  which  had  to  Him 
no  meaning  save  as  applied  to  a person.  To  the  Jew  the 
Messianic  King  was  the  Son  of  God,  but  to  Jesus  the  Son  of 
God  was  the  Messianic  King.''  Hence  in  strong  contrast  to 
His  avoidance  of  the  official  title  is  His  use  of  the  personal 
name  “Father”  for  God.  He  spoke  of  God  in  the  most  im- 
pressive forms  and  exclusive  sense  as  His  Father.  His  usage 
is  too  distinctive  and  exceptional  to  be  an  accident.  Nothing 
so  marked  Jesus  as  His  feeling  of  kinship  with  men,  His 
brotherhood.  His  love  of  standing  in  their  midst  while  they 
prayed  “ Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven.”  All  the  more  on 
this  account  is  His  action  significant  when  He  detaches  Him- 
self from  man  and  distinguishes  Himself  as  in  a pre-eminent 
sense  the  Son  of  God.  Thus  He  warns  men  that  only  those 
who  “do  the  will  of  My  Father  who  is  in  heaven  ” shall  enter 
into  the  kingdom.®  None  but  those  who  confess  Him  before 
men  are  to  be  confessed  before  His  Father.®  Only  those 
plants  which  His  Father  has  planted  shall  endure."^  The  con- 
fession of  Peter  is  due  to  the  inspiration  of  “My  Father.”® 
The  angels  do  always  behold  His  Father’s  face.®  His  Father 
answers  prayer.'®  The  saved  are  the  “ blessed  of  My  Father.”" 
In  the  awful  moments  of  Gethsemane  and  the  cross  it  is  to 

* Matt.  xiv.  33. 

2 Matt,  xxvii.  54;  Mark  xv.  39. 

® Cf.  His  answer  to  chief  priest,  and  rapid  substitution  of  his  own  “ Son 
of  man”  for  the  priest’s  “ Son  of  God”  (Matt,  xxvii.  64  ; Mark  xiv.  62). 

■*  Wendt,  ii.  436  (Eng.  trans.,  ii.  133). 

^ Matt.  vii.  21. 

® Matt.  X.  32,  33. 

^ Matt.  XV.  13. 

® Matt.  xvi.  17. 


® Matt,  xviii.  10. 
Matt,  xviii.  19,  35. 
Matt.  XXV.  34. 


AND  THE  SON  OF  MAN. 


361 

His  Father  that  He  cries.^  But  He  speaks  still  more  clearly 
and  impressively.  The  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth  is  His 
Father  ; and  to  Him  He  claims  exclusive  and  commanding 
relations.  No  one  knoweth  the  Son  save  the  Father,  or  the 
Father  save  the  Son,  and  he  to  whom  the  Son  willeth  to  reveal 
Him.^  Here  is  mutual  knowledge,  perfect  openness  and  access 
of  each  to  the  other,  but  to  none  besides  ; and  all  who  know 
God  or  get  to  Him  know  Him  and  get  to  Him  through  the 
Son.  It  is  a son’s  knowledge,  and  they  who  receive  it  become 
as  He  was  who  gave  it.  These  are  personal  relations,  and  out 
of  them  spring  all  His  official  activities  and  functions.  Save 
as  Son  He  has  nothing  to  teach  concerning  God  ; as  Son  He 
has  such  knowledge  to  communicate  as  will  make  all  the 
world  restful  and  blessed.  The  last  wickedness  is  to  reject 
the  Son  ^ ; the  highest  beatitude  is  to  know  Him  as  He  is 
known  of  the  Father. 

C.  Tfie  Son  of  man. — But  now  in  what  seems  strict  yet 
complementary  antithesis  to  “ the  Son  of  God  ” stands  “ the 
Son  of  man.”  It  occurs  but  once  in  the  New  Testament  on 
other  lips  than  His  own,'^  but  so  often  on  His  that  it  may  be 
described  as  the  title  of  His  own  peculiar  choice.^  In  the  Old 
Testament  the  usage  is  varied  ; it  is  now  generic,  and  denotes 
man  in  distinction  from  God,  as  created,  mortal,  impotent,  im- 
perfect ® ; now  specific  man,  as  member  of  a race,  with  all  the 
qualities  of  the  race  he  belongs  to  ^ ; now  personal,  a man  with 

^ Matt.  xxvi.  39,  42,  53  ; Luke  xxii.  42,  xxiii.  34,  46. 

* Matt.  xi.  25-27  ; Luke  x.  21,  22. 

^ Mark  xii.  i-ii.  Under  the  “beloved  son”  of  verse  6 Christ  Himself 
is  to  be  understood.  The  ascending  dignity  of  the  messengers  is  to  be 
noted. 

^ Stephen,  Acts  vii.  56.  But  cf.  Rev.  i.  13. 

® In  singular  contrast  to  His  avoidance  of  “ Son  of  God  ” in  the  Synoptics 
stands  His  usage  of  “ the  Son  of  man.”  It  occurs  in  Matthew  thirty  times, 
in  Mark  fourteen,  in  Luke  twenty-five. 

® Job  XXV.  6 ; Psalm  viii.  4;  Num.  xxiii.  19. 

^ Psalm  cxlvi.  3 ; Isa.  li.  12. 


362 


THE  OLD  NAME  FINDS  A NEW  SENSH. 


all  the  attributes  of  his  kind,  directly  spoken  to  and  made  the 
instrument  or  mouthpiece  of  Godd  But  the  most  significant 
use  is  in  Danield  He  sees  one  like  a Son  of  man  come  in  the 
clouds  of  heaven  to  the  Ancient  of  Days,  and  there  is  given  to 
him  a kingdom  which  shall  not  be  destroyed.  Now,  the  “ Son 
of  man  ” is  here  a symbol  or  type  ; He  stands  opposed  to  the 
“ four  great  beasts,”  “ diverse  one  from  another,”  which  repre- 
sented the  older  empires.  They  were  the  symbols  of  brute 
force  and  cruelty,  the  ferocious  strength  that  prevailed  by 
devouring  ; but  the  new  kingdom  had  as  its  symbol  humanity  ; 
its  strength  was  reasonable  justice  and  truth.  In  four  re- 
spects it  was  to  stand  opposed  to  the  brute  empires  : first, 
they  were  the  creatures  of  the  earth,  but  it  was  of  Divine 
origin,  the  gift  or  creation  of  the  Ancient  of  Days  ; secondly, 
they  rose  out  of  violence  and  stood  in  wrong,  but  it  lived 
by  the  human  gentleness  which  best  typified  Divine  grace ; 
thirdly,  they  had  only  a local,  but  it  was  to  have  a universal 
dominion,  over  “ all  peoples,  and  nations,  and  tongues  ” ; and, 
finally,  they  were  merely  temporal,  but  it  was  to  continue  for 
ever. 

Now,  while  this  phrase,  which  signified  so  much  as  to 
the  Messianic  King  and  kingdom,  passed  into  the  apocalyptic 
literature,  it  did  not  penetrate  the  Christology  of  the  people 
and  the  scribes  ; but  Jesus  adopted  it,  enlarged  and  enriched 
all  its  elements.^  In  His  hands  it  became  at  once  a personal 
and  a Messianic  title,  the  one  because  the  other  ; the  term 
“ man  ” defined  at  once  a source  and  a character,  the  term 
“ Son  ” a relation  which  expressed  at  once  His  nature,  function, 
and  work.  The  text  determinative  of  His  usage  is  the  famous 
question  to  Peter  ^ “ Whom  do  men  say  that  I,  the  Son  of 

* Ezek.  ii.  1-3,  8,  et  passim. 

* Dan.  vii.  13. 

® The  relation  to  Daniel  seems  to  be  indicated  in  ro  arjixelov  tov  Yiov  tov 
avOpcairov  (Matt.  xxiv.  30,  44;  Mark  xiv.  62,  viii.  38). 

^ Matt.  xvi.  13.  Cf.  Mark  viii.  27  ; Luke  ix.  18. 


LOFTY  FUNCTION  AND  LOWLY  STATE. 


363 


man,  am  ? ” The  place  and  time  and  result  of  the  question  are 
all  significant  It  was  asked  at  Caesarea  Philippi — i.e.,  in  the 
region,  as  it  were,  of  the  Gentiles,  and  in  a city  whose  name 
ominously  joined  the  Roman  and  the  Herodian,  and  so  in  a 
sense  in  the  world  and  before  the  face  of  Rome,  the  most 
terrible  and  enduring  of  the  ancient  empires,  and  just  as  He 
had  turned  Plis  face  to  Jerusalem  and  the  Passion.  The  agony 
and  the  death  were  already  in  His  soul,  and  expressed  in  His 
question.  The  answer  given  by  Peter  was  the  occasion  of 
what  may  be  termed  the  solemn  and  formal  institution  of 
the  kingdom.  From  that  hour  it  was  not  only  for  Him,  but 
for  His  people  and  through  them. 

This  name  is  made  to  denote  at  once  the  loftiest  functions 
and  the  lowliest  state.  “ The  Son  of  man  ” has  power  on 
earth  to  forgive  sins.^  He  is  Lord  of  the  Sabbath.^  His 
coming  creates  the  new  age  which  men  so  desire  to  see.^ 
One  day  His  angels  shall  attend  Him  and  do  His  command- 
ments.^ He  will  reign  and  judge,  fixing  the  eternal  destinies 
of  men.®  But  this  official  majesty  has  its  contrast  in  the 
personal  lowliness  ; “ the  Son  of  man  lives  a humble  and 
suffering  life.  In  this  connection  the  title  is  used  as  if  it 
were  a personal  pronoun,  yet  it  never  seems  so  much  a name 
of  majesty  as  when  it  connotes  the  abasement  of  the  Person 
it  denotes.  He  is  ooorer  than  the  foxes  or  the  birds  of  the 
air,  having  nowhere  to  lay  His  head.®  He  is  reproached 
and  a cause  of  reproach.’^  He  lives  as  a man  and  not  as  an 
ascetic,  and  is  judged  gluttonous  and  a winebibber.®  He 
suffers  many  things,  is  betrayed,  rejected  by  the  chief  priests, 
goes  to  His  destiny,  which  is  death.®  But  this  humiliation 
is  the  way  of  His  majesty  ; by  its  means  He  seeks  that 

^ Matt.  ix.  6;  Mark  ii.  10;  Luke  v.  24.  * Matt.  xxv.  31  ft. 

2 Matt.  xii.  8;  Mark  ii.  28  ® Matt.  viii.  20;  Luke  ix.  58. 

3 Matt.  X.  23 ; Luke  xvii.  20-22.  ^ Luke  vi.  22. 

^ Matt.  xiii.  41,  xxiv.  31.  ® Matt.  xi.  19;  Luke  vii.  34. 

® Luke  ix.  22,  26;  Matt.  xvii.  22,  xx.  18,  xxvi.  2,  45  ; Mark  xiv.  21. 


3^4 


THE  STOCK  AND  THE  BRANCH. 


He  may  save  the  lost,  and  gives  His  life  a ransom  for  many.' 
It  is  essentially  the  name  of  Him  who  redeems  by  the 
sacrifice  of  Himself. 

The  title,  then,  has  at  once  a personal  and  an  official  sense 
(a)  Construed  as  personal,  it  does  two  things : emphasizes, 
(i)  the  stock  whence  He  springs — man,  humanity,  mankind; 
the  Son  of  man  is  no  man’s  son,  is  as  it  were  the  child  or 
offspring  of  the  race.  (2)  His  own  solitude  and  pre-eminence. 
Pie  has  no  fellow,  stands  by  Himself,  is  an  individual  who 
is  a genus,  a person  sui  generis^  not  a son,  but  “ the  Son 
of  man.”  Within  the  lowliness  there  lies  therefore  an  extra- 
ordinary claim  ; He  transcends  every  individual,  and  is,  as 
it  were,  the  equivalent  of  man.  He  is  the  epitome  of 
the  race  at  one  point,  as  its  common  father  was  its 
epitome  at  another.  And  as  such  He  is  its  embodied  ideal, 
bears  not  only  a normal  humanity,  but  the  alone  normal ; in 
Him  man  is  summarized,  and  what  is  alien  to  man  has  no 
being  in  Him.  ( /3 ) Construed  in  its  official  sense  the  title 
emphasizes,  (i)  the  character  and  relations  of  Him  who  fills 
the  office.  As  the  alone  normal  man  He  is  sprung  from  the 
collective  race,  and  related  to  it.  (2)  The  nature  and  scope  of 
the  office.  He  who  fills  it  so  holds  and  represents  man  as  to  be 
able  to  serve  and  save,  to  rule  and  judge  him.  And  (3)  the 
forms  and  terms  of  service  under  Him.  The  normal  becomes 
the  normative  man.  The  citizens  of  the  Messianic  kingdom 
must  be  as  its  Founder:  the  men  He  approves  are  men  who 
act  as  He  did  to  those  who  as  men  are  contained  in  Him. 

§ H. — The  Names  and  the  Mission. 

How  are  the  terms  “ Son  of  God  ” and  “ Son  of  man  ” re- 
lated ? Both  denote,  as  it  were,  on  the  inward  side  a peculiar 
and  exclusive  relation — there  is  this  one  Son  of  God  and  no 
other,  and  no  other  than  this  one  Son  of  man ; and  both  denote 
^ Mark  x,  45  ; Matt,  xx.  28 ; Luke  xix.  lo. 


THE  NAMES  IN  THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL. 


365 


on  the  outward  side  a relation  personal  yet  universal — the  one 
Son  of  the  one  God  is  the  sole  medium  of  the  knowledge  of 
Him,  but  He  is  a medium  for  all ; and  the  one  Son  of  col- 
lective man  is  the  sole  person  in  whom  all  men  are,  and 
through  whom  all  manhood  is.  “ God  ” in  the  one  phrase 
and  “ man  ” in  the  other  denote  each  a unity,  though  the 
unity  is  in  the  one  case  personal,  in  the  other  organic  ; 
and  “ Son  ” expresses  the  mode  in  which  each  unity  is  realized 
— the  one  in  knowledge,  the  other  in  being.  To  know  God 
through  the  Son  is  to  know  Him  as  a Father  and  so  to 
become  to  Him  as  a son  ; and  it  is  in  order  to  this  double 
result  that  we  have  the  double  sonship  of  the  creative  Person. 
One  who  is  Son  of  God  is  alone  able  to  embody  the  ideal 
of  humanity,  and  only  a humanity  conscious  of  Sonship 
can  be  ideal.  Man  as  God  conceived  him  was  son,  and 
so  only  through  the  Son  can  man  become  as  God  conceived 
him.  Hence  as  Son  of  God  Christ  interprets  God  to  man  ; 
as  Son  of  man  He  interprets  by  a process  of  realization  man 
to  God.  The  ideal  He  embodies  is  to  be  perpetuated,  not 
destroyed,  and  those  who  are  formed  after  Christ  become  sons 
of  God  while  sons  of  men.  His  kingdom  is  but  the  multi- 
plication of  Himself,  the  realization  of  the  double  sonship 
in  a common  brotherhood. 

But  in  order  to  understand  the  relation  of  the  two  names 
and  their  significance  alike  for  the  Person  and  the  mission 
we  must  turn  to  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Here  the  organic 
relation  of  the  two  sonships  becomes  clearer  than  in  the 
Synoptics.  The  Prologue  prepares  us  for  a more  impressive 
and  exalted  use  of  the  phrase  “ the  Son  of  God.”  It  is  used 
by  the  Baptist,  Nathanael,  Peter,  Martha,  the  Jews,  and  the 
Evangelist  himself,^  who  adds  emphasis  to  his  usage  by 
recurring  to  the  fA,ovoj€V7]^  of  the  Prologue.^  But  Jesus  also 
employs  it,  though  only  three  times — twice  in  argument  with 

^ John  i.  34,  50,  vi.  69,  xi.  34,  xix.  7,  xx.  31. 

2 John  iii.  16,  i8;  cf.  i.  14-19. 


FATHER  AND  SON  A UNITY. 


366 

the  Jews/  and  once  to  His  disciples  when  He  heard  of  the 
death  of  Lazarus.^  So  far  as  it  has  a distinct  reference  in 
those  cases,  it  is  either  as  an  interpretation  of  the  term 
“ My  Father,”  or  as  associated  with  the  exercise  of  re- 
creative power.  But  much  more  significant  is  the  use  of  the 
term  “ the  Son  ” in  a sense  as  distinctive  and  denominative 
as  “the  Father.”  “The  Father  loveth  the  Son”;  “the  Son 
quickeneth”;  “the  Son  can  do  nothing  of  Himself”;  “all 
may  honour  the  Son  as  they  honour  the  Father  ” ; “ the  Son 
has  life  in  Himself”;  “the  Son  shall  make  you  free”;  the 
Father  glorifies  the  Son,  the  Son  the  Father.^  The  two  are 
so  associated  as  to  be  indissoluble ; the  correlation  involves  a 
unity,  which  yet  does  not  become  identity.  He  is  in  the 
Father,  the  Father  in  Him  ; and  to  see  the  Son  is  to  see  the 
Father,^  for  they  two  are  one.®  Their  being  is  so  concordant 
that  the  Son  can  do  nothing  of  Himself® ; and  as  the  Father 
has  worked  hitherto,  so  He  works.^  Out  of  this  relation  His 
mission  has  come:  He  is  the  sent  of  the  Father®;  His 
work  is  the  Father’s®;  to  believe  Him  is  to  believe  the 
Father  and  to  possess  eternal  life.^®  His  appearance  in  time 
and  all  that  belongs  to  it  flows  from  His  Divine  Sonship, 
and  without  it  no  part  of  His  work  could  have  been 
done. 

But  the  names'  are  in  John  in  a peculiar  sense  and  degree 
epexegetical ; each  helps  to  define  and  explain  the  other. 
Turning,  then,  to  “ the  Son  of  man,”  we  find  that  it  is  here,  as 
in  the  Synoptics,  used  exclusively  by  Jesus,  and  this  is  only 
the  more  emphasized  by  its  occurrence  as  a quotation  from 

^ John  V.  25,  X.  36. 

2 John  xi.  4.  In  ix.  35  the  reading  is  more  than  doubtful : in  iii.  18  the 
words  are  manifestly  the  Evangelist’s. 

2 John  V,  19,  20,  21,  23,  26,  viii.  36,  xvii.  I. 

* John  xiv.  9-1 1. 

® John  X.  30.  ® John  v.  36,  37,  vi.  38,  39,  44,  57,  viii.  16,  18,  etc 

® John  V.  19.  ® John  iv.  34,  ix.  4,  xvii.  4. 

^ John  V.  17.  John  v.  24,  xiii.  15,  16,  xvii.  3. 


DOUBLE  FUNCTIONS  OF  THE  DOUBLE  SONSHIPS.  367 

Him  in  a question  by  the  Jews.^  “ The  Son  of  man  ” is  the 
sign  of  the  open  heaven,  the  body  on  which  the  angels  of 
God  ascend  and  descend.^  He  is  the  only  one  who  has 
ascended  into  heaven,  because  He  alone  has  descended  from 
heaven.^  He  is  lifted  up  that  men  may  believe  on  Him  and 
lived  Authority  to  judge  has  been  committed  unto  Him,^ 
and  to  give  eternal  lifed  Men  must  eat  His  flesh  and  drink 
His  blood  that  they  may  have  lifed  By  His  passion  and 
death  He  is  glorifiedd  The  connotation  is  here  in  every  case 
union  with  man,  as  in  the  other  name  it  had  been  union  with 
God.  “ The  Son  of  man  ” is  lifted  up — the  act  of  man  ® ; but 
“ the  Son  of  God  ” is  given  or  sent — the  act  of  the  Father. 
The  former  is  palpable — to  be  discerned  and  assimilated 
through  sense  ; the  latter  is  spiritual — the  mind  must  believe 
and  conceive  Him.  The  one  expresses  the  temporal  form  and 
relation  of  the  Person  and  His  work,  but  the  other  expresses 
His  extra- temporal  being,  with  its  essential  or  inherent  life. 
The  Son  of  God  brings  the  life  down  from  heaven,  but  the 
Son  of  man  distributes  the  life  and  is  the  way  to  heaven. 
The  double  Sonship  thus  expresses  a double  relation — on  the 
Divine  side  the  unity  of  Father  and  Son,  on  the  human  the 
incorporated  being  of  the  Son  and  man.  The  one  represents 
the  mode  by  which  God  finds  access  to  man,  but  the  other 
the  mode  by  which  man  finds  access  to  God.  And  this  access 
is  only  the  same  thing  seen  from  different  standpoints  ; for 
the  Person  is  one,  though  the  relations  are  twofold.  It  is  the 
Divine  Sonship  that  makes  sacrifice  possible  to  God,  but  the 
human  sonship  which  makes  the  sacrifice  manifest  to  man. 
The  real  sacrifice  is  the  act  and  experience  of  God,  the 
surrender  of  the  Father,  the  submission  of  the  Son  ; but  the 
evidential  process  is  the  Passion  and  Death,  where  the  Son  of 


* John  xii.  34. 

* John  i.  51. 

^ John  iii.  13,  vi.  62. 
John  iii.  14:  cf.  viii.  28. 


^ John  V.  27, 
® John  vi.  27. 
7 John  vi.  53. 


® John  xii.  23,  xiii,  31. 


® John  viii.  28. 


4 


368 


THE  FILIAL  IDEA  CONSTITUTIVE. 


man  dies  for  the  man  whose  Son  He  is.  By  the  unity  of 
Father  and  Son  the  life  of  God  is  communicated  ; by  the  unity 
of  man  and  Son  the  life  of  God  is  distributed.  The  doctrine 
of  Jesus  in  John  thus  completes  and  explains  His  doctrine  in 
the  Synoptics.  It  places  the  Redeemer  in  essential  relation 
with  God,  the/  source  of  redemption,  and  with  man,  its  subject. 
Its  cause  is  sufficient,  for  it  is  Divine  ; its  means  normal,  yet 
adequate,  for  they  are  human.  And  so  through  the  one 
Sonship  what  is  inmost  in  God  comes  to  man,  and  through 
the  other  what  is  most  ideal  in  man  returns  to  God. 

The  inference  we  draw  from  this  analysis  and  discussion  is 
simple  and  obvious  : the  constitutive  idea  in  the  consciousness 
of  Jesus  was  the  filial ; round  it  His  thought  and  character,  as 
it  were,  crystallized.  The  ideal  man  was  the  conscious  Son 
of  God,  and  His  function  was  by  the  creation  of  the  ideal 
consciousness  to  create  ideal  men.  But  the  correlative  of 
the  filial  in  man  is  the  paternal  in  God  ; and  so  the  God 
of  Jesus  is  the  Father  of  men.  His  Fatherhood  precedes, 
creates,  underlies  their  sonship.  It  is  the  basis  of  all  duty, 
involving  an  affinity  of  nature  that  makes  it  possible  for 
men  to  be  perfect  as  their  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect.^ 
They  are  to  love  their  enemies,  that  they  may  be  the  sons 
of  their  Father,  who  maketh  His  sun  to  shine  on  the  evil 
and  the  good.^  Prayer  is  the  speech  of  the  filial  spirit ; 
needs,  therefore,  to  be  simple,  sincere,  the  murmur  of  a love 
that  seeks  only  the  ear  of  the  loved,  and  fears  to  be  over- 
heard by  the  profane.^  So  when  He  speaks  to  men  of 
God  He  calls  Him  “your  Father”  or  “thy  Father.” 
They  are  to  pray  trustfully,  for  if  even  sinful  men  may 
be  kind  fathers,  what  shall  the  gracious  God  be?®  Worship 
must  be  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  for  only  so  can  it  be 
acceptable  to  the  Father.®  And  the  characteristic  of 

^ Matt.  V.  48.  ^ Matt.  vii.  ii. 

2 Matt.  V.  45.  • ® John  iv.  23. 

3 Matt.  vi.  5 ff. 

^ Mark  xi.  25  ; Matt.  vi.  i,  4,  6,  18,  32,  x.  29,  xxiii.  9;  Luke  xii.  32. 


CHRIST’S  INTERPRETATION  OF  HIMSELF. 


369 


Fatherhood  is,  that  while  it  rejoices  in  the  obedient  it 
cannot  surrender  the  bad.  The  prodigal  does  not  cease  to 
be  a son,  and  the  Father  hails  his  penitent  return  with 
weeping  joy ; and  the  hard,  self-righteous  brother  is  rebuked 
into  gentleness,  that  he  may  be  waked  to  brotherhood.^ 
God’s  real  relation  to  man  is  thus  in  the  view  of  Jesus 
the  paternal,  and  so  man’s  perfect  relation  to  God  is  the 
filial.  Sonship  is  of  the  essence  of  humanity  as  paternity 
of  God,  and  so  He  who  is  by  nature  Son  of  God  appears 
as  Son  of  man,  that  men  through  Him  may  attain  the 
filial  state  and  spirit  and  relation.  What  this  means  will 
be  seen  later ; meanwhile,  it  is  enough  to  recognize  its  being. 

§ HI.— His  Person  and  Place. 

From  this  analysis  of  His  names  we  may  infer  that  His 
whole  message  to  man  was  but  the  interpretation  of  Himself. 
And  this  interpretation  represents  Him  as  being  at  once  as 
necessary  to  man  and  as  sufficient  for  all  His  functions  as  if 
He  were  very  God.  What  He  held  of  the  Christ  in  relation  to 
David,^  He  held  of  Himself  relative  to  the  saints,  the  prophets, 
priests,  and  kings  of  the  Old  Testament.  He  transcended 
them  all.  He  was  greater  than  Jonah,  than  Solomon,^  than\ 
Abraham.'^  He  was  greater  even  than  the  most  sacred  institu- 
tions— the  Temple,  the  Sabbath,  the  Law,  and  the  Prophets — 
which  He  at  once  superseded  and  fulfilled.^  And  He  was  not 
only  great  as  regards  the  past,  but  necessary  as  regards 
the  future — the  one  Being  needful  for  all  men  everywhere 
and  needful  not  simply  as  an  official,  but  as  a person.  His 
very  being  is  a condition  of  man’s  chief  good.  It  is  not 
only  as  a teacher  of  truth,  as  a preacher  of  the  kingdom,  or 
as  a realized  ideal  of  righteousness  that  He  is  necessary ; 
the  necessity  is  so  personal  that  it  is  by  His  relation  to 

^ Luke  XV.  II  If.  3 Matt,  xii.41,  42, 

* Mark  xii.  35-37.  * John  viii.  53-56. 

* Matt.  xii.  6,  7 ; Mark  ii.  28  ; Matt.  v.  17,  18,  xxi.  34-37. 

24 


370 


CHRIST  STANDS  ALONE,  IS  NECESSARY, 


men  and  men’s  to  Him  that  they  are  to  be  judged,  saved 

or  lost.  If  men  refuse  to  hear  Him  or  His,  it  shall  be 

more  tolerable  in  the  day  of  judgment  for  Sodorn  and 
Gomorrha  than  for  them.^  To  receive  or  reject  Him  is  to 
receive  or  reject  God.^  To  be  ashamed  of  Him  and  His 
words  before  men  is  to  have  no  part  or  lot  in  the  king- 
dom of  God.^  Men  who  would  share  His  life  must  bear 
His  cross,  for  the  sake  of  Him  and  His  Gospel  all  must 

be  sacrificed,  and  then  all  will  be  gained.'^  The  service 

must  not  be  outer,  ceremonial,  vicarious  ; must  be  inner, 
real,  personal,  or  it  is  worthless.®  He  is  the  living  bond 
of  unity,  necessary  to  fellowship  among  men  and  worship 
of  God.®  If  any  one  dares  to  try  issues  with  Him  he 
will  be  not  simply  broken,  but  ground  to  powder^;  but 
blessed  are  they  who  are  not  offended  in  Him.®  And  as 
the  necessary  He  is  the  solitary ; no  one  can  take  His 
place  or  do  His  work  ; He  stands  alone.  As  the  Son  He 
only  knoweth  the  Father,  and  all  knowledge  is  of  His 
giving.®  No  one  comcth  unto  the  Father  but  by  Him.^® 
And  as  necessary  and  unique  He  is  universal — no  local  or 
provincial  person,  but  One  who  invites  all,  and  promises 
rest  to  the  all  He  invites.^^  He  is  sufficient  for  every 
human  need,  and  becomes  through  His  death  only  the 
more  mighty.  By  being  lifted  up  He  is  to  draw  all  men 
unto  HimselH^  Where  the  office  is  a necessity,  the  person 
is  not ; where  the  person  is  a necessity,  the  office  is  but 
His  exercised  functions,  the  creation  and  consequence  of 
His  being.  In  the  first  case  the  person  is  but  a transient 
incident  in  the  being  of  a perpetual  institution ; in  the 
seeond  case  the  office  is  but  the  form  or  mode  in  which  a 

Matt.  X.  15.  ^ Luke  XX.  18. 

^ Mark  ix.  37  ; Matt.  x.  40.  ® Matt.  xi.  6. 

^ Mark  viii.  38  ; Matt.  x.  32,  33.  ® Matt.  xi.  27  ; Luke  x.  22. 

* Mark  viii.  34,  35,  x.  29,  xiii.  13  ; Luke  xiv.  27.  John  xiv.  6. 

® Matt.  X.  34-39.  Matt.  xi.  28. 

Matt,  xviii.  19,  20,  xxviii.  20.  John  xii.  32. 


UNIVERSAL,  SUFFICIENT,  ACCESSIBLE.  37 1 

perpetual  person  works.  With  Christ  the  person  is  primary, 
the  office  secondary  ; from  the  perpetuity  of  His  person 
has  come  the  perpetuity  of  His  office.  And  so  all  that 
He  is  and  all  that  He  does  must  be  construed,  as  it  were, 
in  the  terms  of  His  personal  being  ; and  before  the  con- 
struction can  be  speculative  it  must  be  historical,  the 
historical  supplying  the  speculative  with  all  its  architectonic 
and  regulative  principles. 

But  the  necessary  and  sufficient  is  also  an  accessible 
person.  If  He  was  needed  by  all,  it  was  only  fit  that  He 
should  be  open  to  all.  And  so  He  appears  as  One  who 
did  not  love  intermediaries,  but  desired  direct  personal  inter- 
course with  men.  It  was  easier  to  reach  the  Master  than 
to  conciliate  a disciple.  The  disciples  would  have  forbidden 
the  mothers  to  present  their  children  ; but  by  His  rebuke 
of  the  men  and  His  reception  of  the  children  He  justified 
the  confidence  of  the  mothers.^  One  of  the  earliest  and 
most  persistent  charges  against  Him  was  “ the  friend  of 
publicans  and  sinners,”  ^ “ this  man  receiveth  sinners  and 
eateth  with  them  ; and  He  vindicated  His  conduct  by  what 
may  be  described  as  at  once  His  most  beautiful  and  most 
characteristic  parables.^  He  did  not  refuse  the  public  homage 
of  the  woman  who  was  “ a sinner,”  ^ or  the  secret  visit  of  the 
man  who  was  “a  ruler  of  the  Jews”®;  He  mingled  with  the 
crowd,  and  it  pressed  upon  Him’';  He  was  touched  by  one 
within  it,  and  He  Himself  touched  the  sick,  the  palsied,  and 
the  blind.®  He  met  and  was  met  of  men  in  the  synagogue, 
the  Temple,  the  mart,  the  street,  the  highway,  the  private 
house.  He  spoke  to  them  on  the  mountain,  from  the  ship, 

‘ Matt.  xix.  13-15;  I\Iark  X.  13-16;  Luke  xviii.  15-17. 

2 Matt.  xi.  19  ; Luke  vii.  34. 

^ Matt.  ix.  10,  II ; Mark  ii.  16 ; Luke  v.  32,  xv.  2. 

* Luke  XV.  ® John  iii.  i,  2. 

* Luke  vii.  37-39.  ^ Luke  vii.  45. 

® Mark  v.  30;  Matt.  viii.  3,  15,  29;  Mark  vii.  33,  i.  41;  Luke  v.  13, 
vii.  14,  xxii.  51. 


372  HIS  DIGNITY  OWES  NOTHING  TO  MYSTERY. 

amid  the  green  fields.  He  did  not  deny  Himself  to  Pharisee 
or  Sadducee,  to  scribe  or  priest.  The  lost  sheep  of  the 
house  of  Israel,  the  woman  of  Samaria,  the  Magdalene  of 
the  city,  the  inquisitive  Greek,  the  authoritative  Roman, 
the  messengers  of  John,  the  men  of  Galilee — all  had  access 
to  Him.  He  loved  to  be  sought  of  men.  His  dignity  owed 
nothing  to  mystery ; indeed,  the  most  mysterious  thing  about 
Him  is  the  increase,  with  increased  knowledge,  of  the  feeling 
of  the  awful  loveliness  and  sanctity  of  His  person.  And 
so  men  are  conscious  of  nothing  but  harmony  in  a picture 
which  now  exhibits  Him  as  “ meek  and  lowly  in  heart,”  and 
now  arrays  Him  in  the  dread  attributes  of  the  judge.  What 
He  was  then  He  was  ever  to  be — an  eternal  presence  in  the 
midst  of  His  people,^  with  all  His  relations  personal  and  all 
immediate,  an  unmcdiated  but  always  mediating  mediator. 


Matt,  xviii.  20,  xxviii.  20. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  RELATIONS  AND  THE  REASON  OF  THE 
CHRISTOLOGIES. 

§ I. — Comparison  of  the  Apostolic  Christologies 
WITH  Christ’s. 

E are  now  in  a position  to  determine  how  the  Apos- 


tolic Christologies  stand  related  to  Christ’s,  whether 


and  to  what  extent  His  was  the  source  of  theirs,  theirs  the 
development  and  explication  of  His.  We  may  say  of  all  save 
James,  who  hardly  had  a Christology,  that  they  so  construed 
Jesus  as  the  Christ  as  to  evolve  not  only  a new  religion  out  of 
the  old,  but  also  a new  philosophy  of  history,  of  man,  and  of 
God.  The  constitutive  ideas  were  His,  but  the  constructive 
endeavour  theirs  ; with  Him  all  is  spontaneous,  the  expression 
of  an  intuitive  or  immediate  consciousness  ; with  them  all  is 
reflective,  the  expression  of  a mediative  consciousness,  using 
the  methods  of  a more  or  less  explicit  dialectic.  The  affinities 
may  be  presented  under  four  heads : historical,  religious, 
philosophical,  theological. 

I.  Tke  Historical. — The  Apostles,  like  Jesus,  conceived  the 
Messiah  as  of  the  Jews,  but  not  as  Jewish.  To  all  His 
character  and  office  were  alike  ethical.  His  method  one  of 
self-denial  and  obedience,  and  His  end  to  save  from  sin 
and  reconcile  to  God.  He  is  the  end  rather  than  the  product 
of  prior  history  ; does  not  so  much  get  meaning  from  it 
as  give  meaning  to  it.  He  is  before  Abraham,  and  so  the 


374 


CHRIST  IS  HIMSELF  THE  SOURCE 


patriarch  and  the  promise  are  made  significant  by  the  Son 
and  the  fulfilment  The  Davidic  descent  is  to  Paul,  as  to 
Jesus,  a mere  outward  incident;  the  material  thing  is  His 
being  as  the  Son  of  God.  In  the  Apocalypse  David  is 
more  an  effect  than  a cause  ; he  is  for  the  Messiah  rather 
than  the  Messiah  through  him.  As  of  the  fathers  and  kings, 
so  of  the  people.  The  Jews  are  for  Christ;  Christ  is  not 
in  order  to  the  being  of  the  Jews.  But  as  Paul  conceives 
it  this  is  a great  honour,  the  very  greatest  possible,  carrying 
with  it  their  place  in  the  whole  order  of  Providence,  their 
election  of  God,  the  fathers,  the  promises,  the  giving  of  the 
law,  the  being  entrusted  with  the  oracles  of  God.  This  was 
the  reason  of  their  pre-eminence  ; they  were  that  Christ  might 
be.  This  was  the  doctrine  of  Matthew  and  John  as  well 
as  of  Paul,  and  all  owed  it  to  Jesus.  As  with  the  people, 
so  with  the  modes  which  connected  Him  with  the  institutions 
and  ideals  of  Israel.  The  law  was  in  order  to  Him,  and 
He  by  fulfilling  it  made  an  end  of  it.  And  so  Paul  con- 
ceived it  as  the  schoolmaster  who  instructed  and  governed 
till  He  came  ; Hebrews  represented  it  as  the  type  or  shadow 
of  the  good  things  He  was  to  bring,  and  the  Apocalypse 
made  the  institutions  it  created  the  symbols  of  His  perfect 
and  enduring  reign.  Jesus  claimed  to  be  the  fulfilment  of 
prophecy,  and  so  Peter  represented  the  Spirit  of  Christ  as 
in  the  prophets,  who  all  testified  of  Him,  while  Paul  and 
Hebrews,  the  Apocalypse  and  Matthew,  all  cited  their  words 
as  witnesses  to  the  truth.  What  Jesus  terms  tradition  Paul 
often  terms  the  law,  which  lived  by  being  interpreted  in 
the  school,  and  to  both  its  dominion  was  the  tyranny  of 
impotence,  which  Jesus  represented  as  ended  by  the  lordship 
of  the  Son  of  man,  and  Paul  by  His  coming  and  creating  in 
us  the  Spirit  of  His  own  Sonship. 

2.  The  Religious. — This  concerned  His  person,  in  all  its 
redemptive  and  normative  significance.  Jesus  predicted  His 
sufferings  from  the  scribes,  His  death  at  the  hands  of  the 


OF  THE  APOSTOLIC  CHRISTOLOGIES. 


375 


chief  priests  and  rulers ; and  Paul  not  only  describes  the 
princes  of  this  world  as  crucifying  the  Lord  of  glory,  but 
also  connects  Christ’s  death  under  the  law,  which  is  the 
abstract  of  chief  priest  and  ruler,  with  our  redemption  from 
its  curse.  Christ  speaks  of  His  religion  as  a new  covenant 
in  His  blood  ; and  Hebrews  develops  His  words  into  the 
elaborate  contrast  of  the  old  covenant  and  the  new,  trans- 
lating all  the  sensuous  elements  of  the  old  into  their  spiritual 
counterparts.  Jesus  represents  His  body  as  a temple,  which 
is  to  take  the  place  of  the  one  built  with  hands ; and  Paul 
applies  the  figure  now  to  the  Church,  which  is  His  body, 
now  to  the  men,  and  now  to  the  bodies  of  the  men  who 
are  Christ’s ; while  in  the  Apocalypse  the  Lamb  Himself  is 
the  temple,  and  in  Hebrews  the  High  Priest’s  presence 
constitutes  the  heaven  where  He  is  the  holy  of  holies.  The 
form  of  the  thought  is  Apostolic,  but  its  essence  is  of  Christ. 
He  preaches  the  kingdom  and  founds  a society  for  the  realiza- 
tion of  His  ideal,  and  this  becomes  in  all  the  Apostles  the 
Church.  His  society  is  ethical  through  and  through,  and  so 
the  terms  in  which  they  describe  and  express  the  society  are 
all  ethical  : the  ancient  ceremonialism  is  the  repealed  law  of 
Paul ; the  old  sacerdotalism  is  the  transcended  priesthood  and 
ritual  of  Hebrews.  At  the  touch  of  His  hand,  the  old  religion 
of  the  letter  has  passed  away  ; all  has  become  of  the  Spirit 
and  the  truth. 

3.  TJie  Philosophical. — This  element  appears  mainly  in  the 
new  anthropology,  which  develops  the  ideas  connected  with 
the  name  “ the  Son  of  man.”  These  ideas  may  be  divided 
into  two  classes — those  suggested  (a)  by  its  connotation, 
ifi')  by  its  absolute  sense.  He  is,  as  to  (a),  in  harmony  with 
His  own  usage,  conceived  by  the  Apostles  as  the  end  of  the 
law,  and  as  the  normative  person  who  creates  a normal  society 
or  kingdom  where  the  law  is  love.  He  reigns  and  judges,  dies 
for  our  sins,  gives  His  life  a ransom  for  many,  creates  a right- 
eousness by  faith  which  exceeds  the  righteousness  of  the  law  ; 


37^  THE  SON  OF  MAN  THE  NEW  ADAM. 

in  Other  words,  the  outer  law  is  superseded  by  the  inner  life 
He  gives.  The  distinctively  evangelical  elements  in  the 
Apostolical  theology  are  simply  expansions  of  the  ideas  which 
Jesus  had  made  to  cluster  round  “the  Son  of  man.”  And 
these  were  justified  and  explained  by  the  principles  educed 
from  (13)  the  absolute  sense.  He  became  the  ideal  Man, 
made  in  all  things  like  unto  His  brethren,  yet  as  without 
sin  in  a world  where  all  had  sinned,  transcending  all  that 
He  might  help  all.  As  “the  Son  of  man”  he  became 
to  Paul  the  last  Adam,  the  second  Man,  who  stood  as  a 

pai  allel  and  yet  as  an  absolute  opposite  to  the  first, 

head  like  him  of  a race,  but  a spiritual,  not  a physical 
head  ; creator  of  righteousness,  not  of  sin  ; of  life,  not  of  death. 
Paul’s  whole  elaborate  anthropology  is  but  the  dialectical 
explication  of  this  name.  In  its  light  man  was  seen  to  be  an 
organic  unity ; the  history  that  divided  Adam  and  Christ 
exhibited  his  evolution  under  forces  that  were  now  of  God 
and  now  of  the  devil ; the  deliverance  that  came  by  the 
second  Man  was  unmeaning  without  the  ruin  that  had 
come  by  the  first.  But  its  significance  ranged  into  the 
future  as  well  as  into  the  past.  The  Son  of  man  was  the 
brother  of  men,  the  first-born  of  the  new  race.  They  were 
to  be  conformed  to  Him,  made  in  His  image  ; His  privileges, 
honours,  standing,  were  to  be  theirs.  As  was  the  new  Man, 
such  was  to  be  the  new  mankind  ; His  brotherhood  meant 
man’s  sonship  and  God’s  Fatherhood. 

4.  T/ie  Theological. — Here  the  regulative  idea  was  supplied 
by  the  supreme  or  determinative  element  in  his  own  conscious- 
ness—viz.,  the  Sonship.  The  idea  of  “the  Son  of  God” 
penetrated  the  Apostolic  thought,  stamped  it  with  its  specific 
character,  created  its  distinctive  theology.  Fatherhood  be- 
came essential  to  God,  sonship  to  man.  Jesus  Christ  is  to 
all  the  Son  of  God,  and  God  the  P'ather  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  The  Father  is  conceived,  studied,  interpreted,  through 
the  Son.  The  men  who  entered  into  His  consciousness 


MONOTHEISM  AND  CHRISTOLOGY. 


377 


looked  at  God  with  His  eyes,  thought  of  God  in  His  way, 
learned  to  speak  of  God  in  His  terms,  and  bequeathed  to  us 
as  their  abiding  legacy  an  interpretation  of  Christ  which  was 
an  interpretation  of  God. 


§ IL— CONCLUSORY  AND  TRANSITIONAL. 

1.  This  Christology  was  the  work  of  Jews,  men  who  had 
Monotheism  as  a passipn  in  their  blood  ; and  made  its  appeal 
to  men,  many  of  whom  were  of  the  same  race  and  had  the 
same  passion.  Yet  these  men  join  God  and  the  Son  of  God 
together,  speak  of  them  with  equal  honour,  and  do  them  equal 
reverence,  using  of  the  Son  terms  as  descriptive  of  Deity  as 
any  they  ever  use  of  the  Father ; and  neither  they  nor  the 
men  they  address  feel  any  shock  or  any  sense  of  incongruity 
in  such  usage.  They  all  think  that  God  has  only  become 
worthier  of  obedience  and  love. 

2.  The  Person  to  whom  they  ascribe  a dignity  so  transcen- 
dent, and  for  whom  they  claim  a reverence  so  extraordinary, 
had  a quarter  of  a century  before  suffered  death  on  the  cross 
at  the  hands  of  His  own  people,  who  were  the  elect  people  of 
God.  This  date  is  taken  from  those  Pauline  Epistles  which 
even  the  most  radical  rational  criticism  has  regarded  as  our 
oldest  authentic  Christian  literature  ; but  this  literature  is  as 
high  in  doctrine  as  any  of  the  later,  and  has  as  its  author  the» 
most  characteristic  Jew  of  them  all.  As  there  was  nothing  in  ^ / 
the  outward  state  or  fortunes  of  this  Jesus  to  suggest  a dignity  " 
so  pre-eminent  and  absolutely  singular — indeed,  everything  to  ^ • 
suggest  the  very  opposite— the  result  must  have  been  due  to/ 
the  transcendent  qualities  of  His  person,  to  His  consciousness' 

as  expressed  in  speech,  in  character,  and  in  action. 

3.  The  Apostolical  interpretation  of  Him  was  absolutely 
opposed  to  what  may  be  termed  the  science  and  the  philo- 
sophy  of  the  time.  If  ever  both  educated  and  common  sense/ 
would  have  justified  not  only  scepticism  but  the  most  frank 


37S 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  CHRISTOLOGIES 


and  brutal  denial,  it  was  in  this  case.  Men  might  well  have 
resented  it  as  an  insult  to  their  belief  in  God,  and  to  their  own 
reason ; nay,  to  their  very  sense  of  decency.  The  marvel  is 
not  that  they  were  so  much  but  so  little  offended.  The 
reasonable  view  seemed  to  be  contained  in  the  scandal  of  the 
Jews  and  the  sceptical  mockery  of  Celsus.  This  view  was  in 
every  respect  the  direct  and  flagrant  contradiction  of  the 
Apostolic.  Jesus  was  in  the  broadest  sense  a child  of 
nature,  skilled  in  Egyptian  magic,  and  able  to  deceive  the 
simple  into  the  belief  that  He  was  a god.  He  had  no  real 
sense  of  the  Divine.  The  simple  people  He  deceived  imagined 
themselves  the  special  care  of  Heaven,  the  only  marvellous 
thing  being  that  they  were  so  easily  deceived ; yet  it  was 
not  so  very  marvellous,  as  they  were  one  and  all  ignorant 
and  unlearned  men.  Their  apology  was  His  condemnation. 
If  they  had  not  been  men  of  this  order,  they  would  never 
have  believed  in  Jesus  ; and  their  belief  only  helps  to  make 
both  them  and  their  religion  the  more  ridiculous. 

4.  But  the  two  views  have  a right  to  be  tried  at  the  bar  of 
history.  The  question  what  Jesus  Christ  is  cannot  be  settled 
by  an  appeal  to  the  New  Testament,  either  to  Himself  and 
His  Apostles,  or  to  the  Jews  and  Greeks  ; but  history  has  a 
contribution  to  make  that  may  help  towards  a settlement. 
H is  life  is  written  in  the  Gospels,  but  His  history  is  written  in 
the  life  of  civilized  man.  And  before  we  can  even  approxi- 
mately know  Him,  what  the  New  Testament  said  of  Him  must 
be  compared  with  what  history  has  to  say.  Its  verdict  may 
be  summed  up  in  some  positions  that  may  be  described  as 
commonplaces  of  the  philosophy  of  history. 

i.  Jesus  Christ  is  in  His  own  order — viz.,  the  order  of  the 
founders  or  creators  of  religions — the  transcendent  Person  of 
history ; and  to  be  transcendent  here  is  to  be  transcendent 
everywhere,  for  religion  is  the  supreme  factor  in  the  organizing 
and  the  regulating  of  our  personal  and  collective  life. 

ii.  He  is  the  real  Creator  of  Monotheism.  Before  and  apart 


BEFORE  THE  BAR  OF  HISTORY. 


379 


from  Him  we  have  Naturalisms,  Polytheisms,  Pantheisms, 
and  a Henotheism,  which  is  the  term  most  characteristic  of 
Judaism  as  it  was  and  is  ; but  it  is  only  through  Him  and 
within  Christendom  that  Monotheism  has  come  to  be  and  has 
been  incorporated  in  a real  and  realized  religion. 

iii.  He  created  a religion  in  its  own  order  as  transcendent 
as  His  person,  and  its  order  is  the  universal  and  ethical.  The 
one  God  has  as  His  correlative  and  counterpart  the  one 
religion,  and  in  its  character  the  religion  could  not  but  be  as 
was  the  God  ; and  as  were  the  God  and  the  religion,  so  did 
they  design  man  to  be.  By  making  God  a new  being  to  man, 
man  was  made  a new  being  for  the  service  of  God. 

iv.  Since  the  religion  was  universal  and  ethical,  it  stood 
differentiated  from  all  previous  religions  by  being,  on  the  one 
hand,  independent  of  special  polities,  able  to  create  the  varied 
and  dissimilar  polities  or  organs  needed  for  its  ever-changing 
work  ; and,  on  the  other  hand,  capable  of  living  in  all  places, 
under  all  kinds  and  orders  of  government,  empires,  monarchies, 
or  democracies.  The  only  thing  it  could  not  tolerate  was  the 
government  that,  either  by  civil  persecution  or  by  the  absorp- 
tion of  the  religion  into  a civil  institution,  denied  its  right  to  live. 

V.  By  means  of  flis  religion  He  created  a new  ideal  of  life, 
bound  together  the  service  of  God  and  the  service  of  man. 
By  virtue  of  the  ethical  qualities  of  the  God  He  revealed,  love 
of  Him  became  the  mainspring  of  an  obedience  which  evoked 
universal  beneficence.  By  virtue  of  the  ethical  qualities  of 
His  own  person,  love  of  Himself  became  love  of  all  mankind  ; 
service  of  Him,  service  of  the  race. 

vi.  It  is  this  religion  which  constitutes  the  difference  and 
measures  the  distance  between  the  ancient  and  the  modern, 
the  Eastern  and  the  Western  worlds.  The  contrast  between 
the  ancient  and  modern,  especially  in  all  that  concerns  the 
higher  religions  and  humaner  moral  ideals,  is  an  impres- 
sive witness  to  the  personal  pre-eminence  and  grandeur  of 
Christ.  The  contrast  between  the  Eastern  and  Western 


38o 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST 


worlds,  especially  in  those  forces  that  work  for  order  and 
progress,  freedom  and  mobility,  ethical  achievement  and 
public  conscience,  is  an  invincible  testimony  to  the  per- 
manence and  efficiency  of  the  moral  energies  which  He 
embodies. 

vii.  The  most  remarkable  fact  in  the  history  of  His  religion 
is  the  continuous  and  ubiquitous  activity  of  His  person.  He 
has  been  the  permanent  and  efficient  factor  in  its  extension 
and  progress.  Under  all  its  forms,  in  all  its  periods,  and 
through  all  its  divisions,  the  one  principle  alike  of  reality 
and  unity  has  been  and  is  devotion  to  Him.  He  is  the 
Spirit  that  inhabits  all  the  Churches,  the  law  that  rules  the 
conscience  and  binds  into  awed  and  obedient  reverence 
the  saintly  men  who  live  within  all  the  communions  that 
bear  His  name. 

viii.  Love  of  Him  has  remained  the  inspiration  and  com- 
manding passion  of  His  Church.  Other  loves  have  died,  or, 
by  being  embalmed  in  literature,  have  become  means  of 
cultivating  the  imagination ; but  this  love  has  been,  as  it  were, 
an  immortal  spirit,  incapable  of  death,  though  capable  of 
being  incarnated  in  infinite  modes  or  forms  of  moral  and 
social  being.  It  is  the  only  thing  in  the  region  of  moral 
motive  that  can  be  described  as  an  imperishable  yet  con- 
vertible force,  whose  changes  of  form  never  mean  decrease  of 
energy  or  loss  of  power. 

ix.  This  love  is  even  more  remarkable  for  its  ethical 
quality  than  for  its  energy  and  persistence.  It  has  changed 
the  bad  into  the  good  ; has  even  created  in  wise,  commonplace, 
or  even  mean  and  ignoble  men  emotions  so  dissimilar  as  the 
passion  for  holiness,  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity,  the  zeal  to 
save,  the  hatred  of  oppression,  the  love  of  liberty  and  of 
truth.  It  has  quickened  the  imagination  of  the  poet  and 
the  painter,  of  the  warrior  and  the  statesman,  and  may  be 
described  as  the  one  love  which  has  been  most  universal 
where  most  consciously  personal  : the  men  who  have  most 


IN  THEOLOGY  AND  THE  CHURCH.  38 1 

absolutely  loved  Christ  have  been  also  the  men  who  have 
most  truly  loved  all  men  and  the  whole  of  man. 

X.  But  its  action  on  the  Godward  emotions  and  acts  has 
been  no  less  marvellous.  It  has  made  love  of  God  a reality, 
has  caused  men  to  feel  that  they  are  capable  of  loving  Him 
and  He  capable  of  being  loved.  Without  the  person  of  Christ 
the  language  of  adoration,  of  gratitude,  of  wonderment,  in 
which  the  Church  has  for  all  the  centuries  of  its  existence 
spoken  its  love  of  God,  would  cease  to  have  any  meaning  or 
any  reason  or  any  right  to  be. 

xi.  And  this  means  that  His  person  has  affected  the  theistic 
conception  which  He  originally  created.  It  has  prevented  the 
Monotheism  becoming  a mere  abstraction,  a Pantheism  on 
the  one  hand,  or  a Deism  on  the  other.  This  is  the  result 
that  could  least  of  all  have  been  foreseen.  The  action  of  the 
Person  might  have  been  expected  either  to  hide  the  yitoVo?  ^eo? 
or  dissolve  Him  into  a plurality ; but  it  has  done  the  very 
opposite — made  the  fjuovo^  absolute  and  the  ^eo?  real. 

xii.  The  life  of  the  religion,  then,  lies  in  the  person  of  its 
Founder;  all  that  it  has  done  for  the  race  is  but  a form  of  His 
action  within  and  through  it.  He  has  given  actuality  to  its 
theistic  beliefs,  has  been  the  motive,  impulse,  and  law  to  all 
its  beneficences.  The  sense  or  consciousness  of  His  abiding 
presence  constitutes  His  Church  ; the  emotions  He  awakens 
determines  all  its  worship  and  all  its  desires.  Even  where  this 
seems  most  concealed,  it  is  yet  present  as  the  veritable  seat  and 
principle  of  life.  The  Virgin  may  seem  to  hold  the  first  place 
in  what  may  be  called  the  more  vulgar  Roman  worship ; but 
she  does  it  not  as  woman,  but  as  mother  ; she  stands  there 
not  in  her  own  right,  but  by  virtue  of  her  Son.  The  opposite 
fault  has  been  committed  in  many  an  evangelical  sermon  ; 
the  Son  has  been  so  preached  as  to  hide  the  Father,  or  to 
deny  Him  by  absorbing  those  ethical  qualities  which  are  most 
distinctively  Divine.  But  here,  too,  the  Son  could  not  be 
without  the  Father,  or  the  Father  without  the  Son ; both  were 


382  THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  THE  ONCE  INCREDIBLE. 


needed  to  the  being  of  either  ; and  so  the  emphasis  on  one  was 
only  a crude  way  of  expressing  their  unity.  The  historical 
fact  then  remains — the  person  of  Christ  has  given  reality  to 
the  life  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  actuality  both  to  its 
belief  in  God  and  to  the  God  it  has  believed  in. 

5.  We  come  back,  then,  to  consider  the  two  views  as  they 
stand  at  the  bar  of  history.  The  world  has  for  now  almost 
nineteen  centuries  had  experience  of  the  two  interpretations 
of  Christ — the  Ethnico-Judaic  and  the  Apostolical,  the  natural 
and  the  supernatural ; and  may  we  not  say  with  this  remark- 
able result — that  the  supernatural  offers  a more  reasonable 
philosophy  of  this  experience  than  the  natural?  For  the 
attempt  to  connect  Christ  with  all  men  and  the  whole  past  of 
man  has  been  more  than  justified  by  His  continued  creative 
presence  in  what  was  then  future  and  is  now  past,  and  His 
easy  pre-eminence  over  the  conscience  and  the  conduct  of 
what  is  still  present.  What  seemed  so  incredible  then  appears 
so  credible  now  that  apology  has  become  the  duty  of  disbelief 
rather  than  belief ; culture  is  now  almost  as  coy  of  denial  as  it 
was  then  of  faith.  Something  surely  is  due  to  the  foresight, 
or  inspiration,  or  whatever  the  quality  may  be  called,  of  these 
Apostolical  men.  If  they  had  been  guided  by  probability, 
they  could  never  have  believed  as  they  did  ; but  apologetics 
can  now  argue  that  all  the  probabilities  are  on  the  side  of 
the  then  improbable.  History  is  a scene  of  order  and  pro- 
gress. Failure  may  belong  to  the  individual,  but  development 
is  proper  to  the  whole.  Yet  if  there  be  ordered  movement  in 
history,  then  the  most  necessary  person  of  history  is  the  person 
most  necessary  to  the  movement  and  the  order.  And  as  it 
does  not  lie  open  to  doubt  that  this  is  Jesus  Christ,  it  follows 
that  He  is  the  last  person  that  can  be  conceived  as  an  accident 
or  a creation  of  chance.  And  what  is  the  Apostolical  theology 
but  an  attempt  to  explain  His  place  in  the  providential  order 
of  the  world.  His  necessity  on  the  one  hand  to  God,  and  on 
the  other  to  man  ? And  have  not  the  very  things  that  made 


WISDOM  JUSTIFIED  OF  HER  CFIILDREN.  383 

the  attempt  seem  then  absurd  become  to-day  its  best  vindica- 
tion ? Wisdom  has  been  justified  of  her  children. 

6.  The  theology  which  embodied  the  attempts  is  marked 
by  singular  originalify.  Its  way  is  its  own.  In  order  to  be  it 
had  to  effect  equal  changes  in  the  current  and  conventional 
ideas  of  God  and  man.  Of  these  ideas  there  were  many  types, 
though  only  two  that  could  have  influenced  the  New  Testa- 
ment writers — Judaic  or  Hebrew  Deism,  and  Hellenic  Theism 
and  Mythology ; but  the  apostolic  theology  most  significantly 
differs  from  both.  In  its  notion  of  God  it  is  not  deistic,  like 
Judaism  ; does  not  so  divide  God  and  man  that  the  two  can 
be  conceived  only  as  opposites,  mechanically  related — i,e.y 
as  forces  and  not  as  spirits,  with  natures  too  different  and 
opposite  to  be  capable  of  interpenetrative  being.  And  it  is 
not  on  the  theistic  side  monistic,  like  Greek  thought,  and  on 
the  historical  mythological,  like  Greek  religion — it  docs 
not,  on  the  one  hand,  reduce  Deity  to  the  substance  that 
remains  unchanged  amid  all  the  changes  of  phenomenal 
existence  ; nor,  on  the  other,  does  it  by  a process  either  of 
apotheosis  or  of  generation  abolish  all  distinction  between 
God  and  man.  Apotheosis  implied  that  God  and  man  were 
so  near  in  status  and  in  dignity  that  the  gods  into  whose 
ranks  the  man  was  admitted  were  as  little  creators  and  as 
little  by  their  own  might  or  right  immortal  as  the  man ; 
while  he  by  entering  their  society  did  not  cease  to  be  a 
creature,  nor  did  he  become  in  any  tolerable  modern  sense 
Divine.  And  so  descent  from  the  gods  did  not  involve 
Deity  as  the  Apostolic  writers  understood  it  or  as  we  under- 
stand. But  the  remarkable  thing  in  their  theology  is  that 
by  the  way  it  took  Monotheism  was  made  absolute ; yet 
the  relation  of  God  to  man  made  real,  organic,  continuous. 
God  was  made  man’s  Father,  man  God’s  son  ; and  the  very 
notion  of  their  relation  involved  the  affinities  of  their  natures, 
the  distinctness  of  their  personalities,  and  the  community  and 
connection  of  their  lives.  And  where  both  were  so  conceived 


384 


THE  THEOLOGY  INCARNATED  IN  DEEDS. 


it  was  really  a thing  most  reasonable,  consonant,  as  it  were,  to 
the  higher  and  universal  or  common  nature,  that  God  by  the 
method  of  incarnation  should  become  fully  known  to  man, 
and  man  realize  His  ideal  and  organic  being  before  God. 

7.  The  theology  did  not  stand  alone ; it  is  but  one  of  the 
many  creations  which  came  from  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  He 
created  the  men  who  made  the  theology,  the  society  they 
formed,  the  ideals  they  followed,  the  things  they  achieved. 
And  their  continued  being  is  but  the  permanent  effect  wit- 
nessing to  the  permanence  of  the  cause.  Through  faith  in 
Him  faith  in  God  has  lived  upon  the  earth  ; and  the  sense 
of  His  presence  has  been  not  only  the  life  of  His  religion, 
but  of  all  its  manifold  beneficences.  Certainly  this  theology 
cannot  be  construed  as  a mere  chapter  in  the  history  of 
speculation,  for  within  it  live  the  forces  that  have  made  the 
religion  of  Christ  the  religion  of  civilized  man  and  man  it  has 
civilized. 


DIVISION  II. 


CHRIST  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  GOD. 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  GODHEAD. 

§ I.  -The  Doctrine  of  the  Godhead  and  Revei  ation. 


HE  interpretation  of  God  consists  of  two  distinct  yet 


X complementary  parts — a doctrine  of  God  and  of  the 
Godhead.  God  is  deity  conceived  in  relation,  over  against 
the  universe,  its  cause  or  ground,  its  law  and  end  ; but  the 
Godhead  is  deity  conceived  according  to  His  own  nature, 
as  He  is  from  within  and  for  Himself.  God  is  the  Godhead 
in  action  within  the  sphere  of  the  related  and  the  conditioned  ; 
the  Godhead  is  God  in  the  region  of  transcendental  existence, 
yet  with  His  immanent  activities  so  exercised  that  His  absolute 
being  is  concrete  and  complex,  as  opposed  to  abstract  and 
simple.  God  is  an  object  of  natural  knowledge — i.e.^  He  can 
be  known  from  His  works,  or  by  a process  of  regressive  and 
analytical  thought ; but  the  Godhead  is  a subject  of  super- 
natural revelation — i.e.,  can  be  known  only  as  man  is  in  a sense 
taken  into  the  secrets  of  the  Divine  nature.  By  the  light  of 
reason  we  may  know  that  God  is,  but  what  He  is  we  can 
know  only  as  He  Himself  speaks.  Yet  the  natural  knowledge 
is  incomplete  without  the  supernatural.  What  reason  reaches 
is  an  abstraction,  or  series  of  co-ordinated  qualities,  streams 


386  REVELATION  CHANGES  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD 

whose  course  is  beneficent,  tendencies  that  make  for  righte- 
ousness ; but  what  revelation  discloses  is  the  life  within — the 
motives,  the  emotions,  the  inner  nature  of  Him  who  speaks  ; 
in  a word,  it  changes  our  idea  of  God  into  knowledge  of  the 
Godhead.  But  this  means  that  man  no  longer  looks  at  God 
through  the  eyes  of  nature,  but  rather  at  nature  through  the 
eyes  of  God — i.e.^  he  thinks  of  the  Divine  in  the  categories  of 
the  Divine,  or  through  a consciousness  of  its  creation.  And 
this  constitutes  the  distinction  between  natural  and  revealed 
religion  : the  former  is  God  read  through  nature,  or  inter- 
preted in  its  terms  ; the  latter  is  nature  read  through  God, 
or  interpreted  in  terms  of  a consciousness  pervaded  by  His 
word.  The  characteristic  of  a theology  reasoned  out  from 
the  principles  of  a revealed  religion  may,  then,  be  said  to  be 
this — the  inner  qualities  and  constitution  of  the  Godhead  are 
made  so  to  penetrate  the  notion  of  God  that  all  His  outer 
action  is  conceived  as  a transcript  of  His  inner  being.  The 
logical  consequence  of  the  revealed  doctrine  of  the  Godhead 
is  thus  a new  doctrine  of  God.^ 

Now,  it  must  be  here  quite  frankly  stated  that  a doctrine  of 
the  Godhead  as  the  basis  of  a doctrine  of  God,  is  possible  only 
as  a result  of  revelation  and  through  it.  We  are  not  here 
concerned  with  a natural  theism,  but  with  a theology  whose 
formal  source  is  a revelation.  If  we  refuse  to  believe  that 
God  has  so  acted  and  spoken  as  to  reveal  Himself,  we  can 
have  no  data  for  a positive  conception  of  the  Godhead,  for 
we  deny  that  we  have  any  means  of  knowing  what  He  is. 
But  if  belief  in  God  be  in  harmony  with  reason,  the  belief  in 
revelation  cannot  be  contrary  to  it ; nay,  the  real  contradiction 
would  be  disbelief.  Agnosticism  assumes  a double  incom- 

^ Cf.  Butler  on  “ the  essence  of  natural  religion  ” and  “ the  essence  of 
revealed,”  each  taken  as  an  ‘Gnward  principle” — the  former  consisting  “in 
religious  regards  to  God  the  Father  Almighty,”  the  latter  “ in  religious 
regards  to  the  Son  and  to  the  Holy  Ghost”  (“Analogy,”  pt.  ii.,  c.  i).  It 
seems  to  me  the  difference  is  better  indicated  by  the  change  worked  by  the 
.notion  of  the  Godhead  in  the  doctrine  of  God. 


INTO  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  GODHEAD.  387 

pctence — the  incompetence  not  only  of  man  to  know  God,  but 
of  God  to  make  Himself  known.  But  the  denial  of  competence 
is  the  negation  of  Deity.  For  the  God  who  could  not  speak 
would  not  be  rational,  and  the  God  who  would  not  speak 
could  not  be  moral ; and  so  if  Deity  be  at  once  intelligent  and 
moral,  there  must  be  some  kind  or  form  of  revelation.  And 
this  revelation  must,  from  its  very  idea,  be  the  testimony  of 
God  touching  Himself,  for  what  is  not  this  does  not  reveal. 
Nothing  that  man  can  learn  of  nature  by  research  into  nature, 
nothing  that  he  can  discover  of  truth  by  the  exercise  of  his 
own  faculties,  however  late,  unless  it  be  supernaturally  com- 
municated, in  his  personal  or  collective  history  the  discovery 
may  come,  belongs  properly  to  the  idea  of  revelation.  Were 
it,  as  Lessing  conceived  it,^  simply  education,  a means  of 
hastening  and  directing  human  development,  then,  as  adding 
nothing  to  what  man  can  find  within  the  terms  of  nature,  it 
could  have  no  right  to  its  name.  Then  were  this  its  sphere, 
its  action  would  be  mischievous  rather  than  beneficent 
Whatever  shortens  the  course  of  human  development  stunts 
it.  The  search  for  truth  is  the  inspiration  of  reason  ; it  is 
because  man  knows  that  he  does  not  know,  that  he  is  com- 
pelled to  seek  for  knowledge.  Necessity  is  the  mother  of 
invention  ; without  conscious  ignorance  there  would  be  no 
motive  to  discovery  and  no  discipline  from  it.  Revelation, 
then,  can  only  concern  what  is  so  above  nature  as  to  be 
beyond  the  power  of  man  to  discover  or  of  nature  to  disclose  ; 
in  other  words,  it  must  relate  to  God,  proceed  from  Him,  and 
be  concerned  with  Him.  But  though  it  be  His  testimony 
touching  Himself,  yet  it  must  enter  the  consciousness  of  man 
through  his  history  and  in  the  forms  of  his  experience.  And 
it  is  here  that  Christ  takes  His  place.  He  is  the  supreme 
revelation ; in  Him  the  consciousness  of  God  and  man  exist  in 
purity  and  in  perfection.  To  both  He  is  essentially  related. 
By  virtue  of  His  transcendental  relations  He  has  the  con- 

* Supra,  p.  194. 


388  DOCTRINE  OF  GOD  HEBREW  AND  ROMANS 

sciousness  which  qualifies  Him  to  deliver  the  Divine  testimony 
to  the  Divine  ; by  virtue  of  His  being  in  history  and  within 
the  terms  of  our  experience,  He  has  the  generic  or  racial  con- 
sciousness which  enables  Him  to  deliver  His  message  to  man. 
He  is,  as  it  were,  the  immanent  intelligence  of  God  become  a 
corporate  intelligible  to  man  ; and  so  is  like  a middle  term 
created  by  the  reason  that  would  be  interpreted  for  the  use  of 
the  interpretative  reason.  He  so  knows  God  from  within,  and 
so  represents  what  He  knows  to  the  humanity  He  came  to 
live  within,  that  for  man  to  interpret  Him  is  to  interpret  God 
as  He  is  to  Himself — a Godhead  while  a God.  The  inter- 
pretation of  God  in  the  terms  of  the  consciousness  of  Christ 
may  thus  be  described  as  the  distinctive  and  differentiating 
doctrine  of  the  Christian  religion. 


§ H. — The  Doctrines  of  God  and  the  Godhead. 

These  doctrines,  as  they  exist  in  Christian  theology,  have 
each  a very  different  history  and  function.  The  belief  in  the 
Godhead  is  specifically  Christian,  but  the  belief  in  God  as 
specifically  Hebrew.  The  former  was  created  by  the  attempt 
to  understand  the  person  of  Christ,  or  explain  and  unfold  the 
contents  of  His  consciousness  ; but  the  latter  was  inherited,  a 
gift  which  Judaism  gave  to  Christianity.^  And  the  processes 
which  elaborated  the  beliefs  into  doctrines  were  as  different  as 
their  sources.  The  doctrine  which  conceives  God  as  Law- 
giver and  Ruler  had  as  the  main  or  active  agent  in  its 
form.ation  the  Latin  Church.  But  the  doctrine  which  con- 
ceives the  Godhead  as  a Trinity,  or  a threefold  distinction  of 
Persons  subsisting  in  a unity  of  essence,  had  as  the  active 
agent  in  its  formation  the  Greek  Church.  Each  Church,  as  we 
have  seen,  exercised  its  formative  activity  under  different  con- 
ditions, the  plastic  agency  being  Roman  law  and  polity  in  the 
one  case,  and  Greek  philosophy  in  the  other.  The  result  is 


* Supra^  pp.  64-66. 


OF  THE  GODHEAD  CHRISTIAN  AND  GREEK.  389 

two  distinct  and  very  different  conceptions,  which  have  not 
only  failed  to  modify  or  correct  each  other,  but  have  even 
retained  what  we  may  term  the  antipathies  of  their  respective 
creators.  It  is  significant  that  the  Greek  Church  was  deter- 
mined by  its  conception  of  Christ’s  person  to  its  doctrine 
of  the  Godhead,  but  the  Latin  Church  by  its  conception  of 
God  to  the  doctrine  of  His  work.  This  means  that  in  the 
former  case  the  material  factor  of  the  doctrine  was  native 
to  the  religion,  but  in  the  latter  case  it  was  alien.  And 
as  a consequence  the  two  doctrines  have  remained  in  a 
remarkable  degree  independent  and  unrelated,  in  a state 
of  juxtaposition  rather  than  of  mutual  permeation.  The 
Latin  God  has  been  too  forensic,  the  Greek  Godhead  too 
metaphysical,  to  be  incorporated  in  a single  homogeneous 
notion.  God,  forensically  conceived,  becomes  the  Absolute 
Sovereign  whose  will  is  law,  whose  function  is  administration 
and  judgment ; the  Godhead,  metaphysically  construed,  be- 
comes a number  of  differentiated  Persons,  whose  unity  depends 
upon  a community  of  essence.  The  more  the  stress  falls  on 
the  legal  character  and  relations  of  God,  the  less  ethical  they 
grow  ; and  the  more  metaphysical  the  construction  of  the  God- 
head becomes,  it  is  the  more  reduced  to  a series  of  personalized 
abstractions,  whose  relations  are  logical  rather  than  real. 
Neither  was  sufficiently  determined  by  the  determinative 
element  in  the  consciousness  of  Christ.  In  the  Greek  theology 
Father  and  Son  are  so  used  to  denote  immanent  relations  in 
the  Godhead,  that  their  significance  for  man  as  a whole  is, 
though  not  lost,  yet  weakened  and  impoverished  ; and  in  the 
Latin  theology  the  ideas  of  Sovereign  and  Lawgiver  are  so 
emphasized  that  those  of  Father  and  son  almost  disappear. 
In  the  former.  Paternity  is  not  allowed  to  penetrate  the  whole 
Godhead  over  against  man,  or  Sonship  to  penetrate  man  as  a 
whole  over  against  God  ; but  Fatherhood  is  so  confined  to  the 
first  Person  of  the  Trinity  and  Sonship  to  the  second,  that 
God  tends  to  lose  the  unity  and  reality  of  His  moral  relations 


390 


IMMANENT  ELEMENTS  IN  THE  GODHEAD 


to  man,  and  man  the  unity  and  reality  of  his  moral  being 
before  God.  In  the  latter,  God  becomes  so  much  a juristic 
and  judicial  person,  and  man  so  much  a civil  subject,  that  the 
paternal  and  filial  relations  are  virtually  transmuted  into 
political. 

As  a natural  consequence,  neither  theology  did  justice  to 
the  affinities  and  relations  of  God  and  man.  It  is  dangerous, 
where  the  field  is  so  vast  and  the  opinions  are  so  varied,  to 
make  broad  statements  or  use  too  general  terms  ; but  we  may 
say  that  to  both  theologies,  though  for  different  reasons,  the 
Sonship  of  Christ  was  so  interpreted  as  to  reduce  man’s  from 
a reality  to  little  more  than  a figure  of  speech.  He  was  Son 
by  nature,  we  sons  by  adoption.  He  endowed  the  humanity 
He  assumed  with  the  filial  dignity  and  rights  proper  to  flis 
Deity  ; and  so  constituted  a new  type  and  instituted  a new 
and  correspondent  order  of  being.  As  Son  by  essential  Divine 
nature,  He  was  Only  Begotten  ; as  Son  in  His  assumed  human 
nature.  He  was  First  Born.  His  Sonship  as  the  fiovo^evr}^ 
or  “unigenitus”  was  incommunicable,  but  His  Sonship  as  the 
TrpwTOTo/co?  or  “ primogenitus  ” was  communicable.  As  the 
property  of  His  humanity  man  may  participate  in  it,  and 
become,  like  Him,  a son,  but  by  adoption,  not  by  nature. 
But  this  made  the  Divine  Fatherhood  and  the  human  son- 
ship  alike  unreal.  He  who  is  no  son  by  nature  can  never 
become  a son  by  adoption.  Before  a child  can  be  the 
adopted  son  of  any  man,  he  must  be  the  real  son  of  some 
man  ; and  so  if  it  was  only  by  adoption  that  God  became 
our  Father  and  we  His  sons,  then  we  could  never  in  any 
true  sense  be  His  sons  nor  He  in  any  true  sense  our  Father.^ 

^ The  question  touched  upon  in  the  text  is  very  fundamental  for  the 
interpretation  of  the  Nicene  and  post-Niceiie  theology.  There  are  points 
that  may  be  raised  in  correction  of  the  above  exposition  that  really  support 
it.  Athanasius,  for  example,  strongly  affirms  the  participation  of  man  in 
the  nature  of  the  Word  who  created  him,  but  he  relates  man  as  a creature 
to  God  through  the  Word  rather  than  through  the  Son.  This  means  that 
his  governing  idea  is  here  philosophical  rather  than  religious,  that  while 


NOT  FUSED  INTO  A CONCEPTION  OF  GOD. 


391 


And  this  means  that  unless  Godhead  and  God  be  alike 
interpreted  in  the  terms  of  Fatherhood,  the  interpretation  will 
remain  inadequate  and  incomplete. 

This,  then,  defines  the  order  of  our  discussion.  We  must 
first  state  the  doctrine  of  the  Godhead,  and  then  attempt  to 
bring  it  into  relation  with  the  doctrine  of  God  ; in  other  words, 
through  the  immanent  nature  and  relations  of  Deity  we  must 
approach  Deity  in  His  outward  relations  and  activities. 

§ III.—Christ  and  the  Godpiead. 

The  point,  then,  from  which  our  constructive  endeavour 
must  start  is  this — the  determinative  element  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  Christ  is  the  filial.  He  directly  and  intuitively 
knew  His  own  Sonship,  and  by  its  means  He  made  known 

he  has  on  the  one  hand  come  through  the  New  Testament  to  the  immanent 
relations  of  the  Godhead,  he  has  on  the  other  approached  the  relation  of 
man  to  God  through  the  Schools  of  Alexandria.  Hence  the  Word  makes 
man  in  His  own  image  (xara  t^v  eavrov  cIkovu  eVoijycrer  avrovs),  and  gives  to 
him  something  of  His  own  power,  that  he  may  be  able  to  abide  for  ever  in 
beatitude  (“  De  Incar.  Verbi,”  c.  3).  And  the  Maker  becomes  the  Redeemer, 
is  made  man  that  men  might  be  made  God,  (avros  yap  evrjvdpcoTrrjaev,  iva 
'^p.e'is  6eo7roir]6iopev)  (Ibid.,  c.  54)-  Cf.  “ Contra  Arian.,”  I.  xi.  39)  aWa  Geo? 
d)v,  varepov  yeyovev  avOpconos,  Iva  pdK\ov  ^pas  BcoTTOLrjarj.  But  though  he, 
of  course,  with  every  degree  of  emphasis  and  insistence  identifies  Son 
and  Word,  he  does  not  with  similar  lucid  emphasis  identify  man’s  par- 
ticipation by  nature  in  the  Sonship  with  his  participation  in  the  Word. 
And  even  this  participation  is  not  by  nature  or  real  constitution,  but  by 
grace  and  as  a donum  super additum  (nXeov  n )(api^6pevos  avrols)-  Hence 
Athanasius  is  here  doubly  defective,  for  he  did  not  bring  his  philosophy 
and  his  theology  into  connection  and  consistency  either  with  each  other 
or  with  nature.  He  does  indeed  say  in  a vague  way  that  in  Him  the 
whole  creation  is  created  and  adopted,  (koI  iv  avrio  nao-a  rj  ktIo-is  Krl^erai 
Ka\  viOTTouiTat)  (“Contra  Arian.,”  III.  xxiv.  9);  but  when  he  comes  to 
detailed  exposition  the  filial  relation  becomes  a thing  not  of  nature  but 
of  adoption,  created  thus  rather  than  restored.  Cf.  “ Contra  Arian.,” 
H.  xix.  and  xxi.,  §§  57-61,  I.  xi.  37;  “De  Deer.,”  VII.  iii.  9,  10.  His 
notion  of  the  primary  and  fundamental  relations  of  God  to  man  are^ 
therefore,  even  with  his  donum  superaddiium  thrown  in,  more  philo- 
sophical than  religious  ; he  has  applied  the  philosophical  idea  to  Christ 
rather  than  made  the  religious  and  filial  idea  which  Christ  embodied. 


392  FATHERHOOD  AND  SONSHIP  CORRELATIVES, 


God’s  Fatherhood.  The  two  were  correlative  and  mutually 
inclusive  ; the  being  of  the  Son  involved  the  Father’s,  and 
the  Father  was  in  character  and  quality  as  was  the  Son. 
The  regulative  element  in  His  mind  became  the  determina- 
tive idea  in  the  Apostolic.  The  New  Testament  interpretation 
of  Christ  is  in  its  ultimate  analysis  an  interpretation  of  the 
Father  in  the  terms  of  the  Son. 

In  the  mind  of  Jesus,  Father  and  Son  were  conceived  as 
forming  a unity  over  against  man.  The  relation  the  Father 
had  to  Him  He  had  to  no  other ; the  relation  He  had  to  the 

penetrate  and  transform  his  notions  of  God,  of  man,  and  of  their  mutual 
relations.  And  this  was  the  common  and  accepted  position  of  the  Greek 
Fathers.  Cf.  Greg.  Thaum.,  “ Horn.,”  iv. , dXX’  ovk  ecrn  napa  ae  aXXos  (pvacL 
Yidy  Geoi) ; Cyril.  Jer.,  “ Catecheses,”  vii.  7, — where  Christ’s  Sonship  as 
Kara  (jivaLv  is  contrasted  with  man’s  as  Kara  Oeaiv.  Epiphanius,  “ Ancor.,” 
49,  holds  that  there  is  no  Sonship  like  Christ’s,  or  that  ought  to  be  com- 
pared with  His;  other  sonships  are  Kara  hut  He  is  the  cfivo-iKws 

vios.  Joh.  Dam.,  “ De  Orth.  Fid.,”  iv.  8,  Kai  avOpoiiros  yeyove  (d  Ytdy  tov 
Gfov),  yeyovap-ev  be  Ka\  Spiels  bt  avrov  viol  Oeov,  vioderrjdevTes  bia  tov  ^anrla- 
piaros'  avTOS  6 (f)vcrei  Ylbs  tov  GeoG,  npcoTOTOKOs  ev  r]puv  Toiy  Oecrei  Kal  ;(dpt7-t 
viols  Oeov  yevop-evoLS  Kal  dbeX<pols  avTov  ;^pf//-iar/(jacri  yeyovev.  We  may 
express  the  general  idea  thus  : the  primary  relation,  both  as  natural  and 
supernatural,  stood  in  the  Word,  the  renewed  or  restored  relation  was 
constituted  in  the  Son — i.e.,  men  were  creatures  by  nature,  but  sons 
by  grace  and  adoption.  In  this  case  the  West  followed  the  East,  and 
made  Fatherhood  and  Sonship  as  immanent  to  Deity  real,  but  as  external 
adventitious  and  more  or  less  figurative.  The  schoolmen  introduced  a 
distinction  between  Y 2iihQi\\oodi  perso?ialiier  2indi  essentialiter : the  imman- 
ent relations — i.e.,  those  of  Father  to  Son  within  the  Godhead — were 
personaliter\  but  the  external  relations — i.e.,  those  of  the  whole  God- 
head to  man — were  essentialiter.  This  was  described  as  a distinction  not 
“ secundum  rem,  sed  tantum  secundum  modum” — i.e.,  the  Fatherhood  and 
Sonship  were  in  each  case  alike  real,  though  differing  as  to  mode.  In  the 
one  case  it  was  a relation  of  persons  within  the  same  essence  ; in  the  other 
a relation  of  essences,  the  one  being  causative,  the  other  created : the 
whole  Trinity  was  Father  of  man,  man  was  son  of  the  collective  Trinity. 
And  so  under  these  distinctions  room  for  distinct  types  of  sonship  could  be 
found.  But  see  Pearson  on  this  “ vulgar  distinction,”  (“  On  the  Creed,” 
Art.  I.)  Of  Patristic  thought  as  a whole  we  may  say,  then,  it  tended  so  to 
emphasize  Paternity  wdthin  the  Godhead  as  to  obscure  and  lose  God’s 
Paternitv  witliin  the  universe. 


AND  DENOTIVE  OF  A SOCIAL  UNITY. 


393 


Father  no  other  person  had.  They  two  were  so  related  that 
each  was  known  only  to  the  other,  and  could  therefore  only 
by  and  through  the  other  be  made  known.  The  unity  was 
so  real  that  to  see  the  Son  was  to  see  the  Father,  to  know 
the  Father  was  to  know  the  Son.  Hence,  while  Jesus  con- 
ceived Father  and  Son  as  distinct  from  each  other.  He  also 
conceived  them  as  having  a common  being  and  as  sustaining 
common  relations  to  man.  In  their  mutual  relations  they  were 
distinct,  but  in  their  common  relations  they  were  a unity  ; and 
in  what  was  mutual  there  was  nothing  that  involved  disrup- 
tion or  division  in  what  was  common.  The  relations  were 
not  voluntary,  but  necessary  ; the  distinctions  not  matters  of 
choice,  but  of  nature  or  essence.  It  is  true  that  in  order  to 
the  being  of  a Son  there  must  be  a Father,  but  it  is  no  less 
true  that  in  order  to  the  being  of  a Father  there  must  be 
a Son.  Fatherhood  is  no  older  than  Sonship,  the  one  is 
only  as  the  other  is ; in  other  words,  if  Fatherhood  is  of 
the  essence  of  Deity,  Sonship  must  be  the  same.  And  to 
Christ  God  does  not  become  Father — He  is  Father  just  as 
He  is  God  ; and  He  Himself  does  not  become  Son — He  is 
Son,  and  were  He  not  Son  He  would  not  be.  And  what 
the  Apostolic  writers  attempt  is  to  express  the  notion,  which 
they  owed  to  Christ,  of  a God  who  is  both  Father  and  Son, 
who  is  a unity  which  is  the  home  of  distinctions,  the  distinc- 
tions not  dissolving  the  unity  nor  the  unity  cancelling  the 
distinctions.  They  remain  as  consciously  and  even  sternly 
monotheistic  as  the  Hebrews,  but  they  are  not  Hebrew  mono- 
theists. They  use  language  that  others  may  feel  inconsistent 
with  monotheism,  but  that  they  do  not,  for  they  have  felt 
their  way  into  an  order  of  ideas  which  combines  and  har- 
monizes elements  that  would  have  seemed  alien  to  the  older 
thought ; but  all  these  elements  make  Deity  infinitely  more 
rich  and  gracious  and  beautiful  than  any  man  or  any  religion 
had  before  imagined  Him  to  be. 

What  the  new  order  of  ideas  was  we  m^y  represent  some- 


394 


IN  ABSOLUTE  LONELINESS  NO  LIFE. 


what  thus : — God  is  love ; but  love  is  social,  can  as  little 
live  in  solitude  as  man  can  breathe  in  a vacuum.  In  order 
to  its  being  there  must  be  a subject,  bestowing  love,  and 
an  object,  rejoicing  in  the  bestowment ; without  the  active 
forthgoing  and  the  passive  reflection  and  the  return  it  could 
not  be,  for  absolute  and  simple  loneliness  of  being  would  be  a 
state  of  complete  lovelessness.  If,  then,  God  is  according 
to  His  essence  love.  He  must  be  by  nature  social ; for 
if  He  were  an  infinite  simplicity,  then  emotion,  with  all 
its  complex  relations  and  manifold  interactions,  would  be 
to  Him  unknown.  But  the  same  necessities  of  thought 
meet  us  from  another  side.  God  is  reason  ; but  a reason  that 
has  nothing  objective  is  no  active  intelligence,  and  has  none 
of  the  conditions  that  make  intelligence  possible.  A speech- 
less reason  would  be  one  in  which  rationality  were  either  latent, 
and  so  a mere  possibility,  or  impotent,  and  so  a mere  passive 
reflector,  if  even  so  much  ; it  could  not  be  an  infinitely  perfect 
mind,  which  cannot  be  other  than  infinitely  active.  But  the 
mind  that  is  this  must  have  all  the  conditions  and  causes  of 
activity  within  itself  and  by  necessity  of  nature.  For  if  they 
are  outside  or  external  to  the  nature,  then  it  is  not  perfect ; 
and  if  they  are  not  by  necessity,  then  as  matters  of  will 
they  once  were  not,  and  before  they  were  Deity  would  be 
imperfect,  and  they  might  never  have  been,  which  leaves  the 
perfection  of  Dei  ty  an  accident  or  chance,  and  so  no  reality.  And 
therefore  we  need  to  conceive,  beside  the  Logos  that  ever  abides 
m God,  the  Logos  that  ever  goes  forth  from  Him.  Without 
the  one  the  other  could  not  be  ; the  being  of  both  is  neces- 
sary to  the  being  of  either.  So  much  ancient  philosophy  had 
perceived,  but  what  Christian  theology  did  was  to  change  the 
abstract  process  into  the  terms  of  a concrete  relation.  The 
translation  of  the  idea  of  an  articulative  Thought  and  an  articu- 
lated Reason  into  the  notion  of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  was  the 
transformation  of  abstract  God  into  concrete  Godhead,  which 
is  no  simplicity,  but  a unity  where  love  and  thought  are 


THE  CHRISTIAN  CONCEPTION  ORIGINAL. 


395 


ev’er  in  exercise,  and  all  the  graces  and  beatitudes  of  social 
existence  are  things  of  the  Divine  essence,  necessary  to  the 
nature  of  God. 

Now,  this  conception  was  not  reached  by  a dialectical 
process,  nor  was  it  a creation  of  scientific  or  elaborative 
thought ; but  it  was  the  result  of  intuition  or  inspiration,  or 
whatever  we  may  term  the  process  by  which  the  imagination, 
possessed  and  transfigured  by  a commanding  personality, 
becomes  spontaneously  creative  of  other  and  higher  things 
than  it  had  ever  dreamed  of.  It  was  a conception  of  remark- 
able originality,  without  parallel  or  analogue  in  any  religion 
or  philosophy  ; yet  it  gave  to  the  idea  of  God  an  actuality 
which  every  religion  and  every  philosophy  had  felt  after 
without  being  able  to  find.  These  are  matters  capable  of 
clearest  historical  proof.  Parallels  to  the  Christian  Trinity 
have  indeed  been  sought  both  by  old  and  recent  scholars 
and  theologians  in  Greek  philosophy  and  mythology  and  in 
Hindu  religion  ; but  in  each  case  the  differences  are  radical. 
The  Hindu  Trimurti  only  represents  the  adaptation  of  a 
Pantheistic  idea  to  historical  conditions.  The  co-ordination 
of  Brahma,  Vishnu,  and  Siva  is  recent,  and  may  be  described 
as  the  result  of  a religious  diplomacy,  all  the  more  real  that  it 
was  unconscious  and  undesigned,  and  a metaphysical  specula- 
tion that  acted  here  just  as  it  had  acted  everywhere.  Each 
of  the  deities  had  a prior  and  very  ancient  history.  They 
run  back  into  the  Vedic  period,  and  are  the  survivals  of 
different  mythological  schools  and  tendencies.  Brahma  (mas- 
culine) is  the  deification  of  the  priestly  idea,  especially  the 
act  and  efficacy  of  prayer ; Vishnu  is  a form  of  the  sun-god, 
who  as  Surya  or  Savitri  moved  like  a beneficent  and  radiant 
spirit  across  the  face  of  the  sky  ; and  Siva  is  the  survivor  of 
the  ancient  storm-gods,  who  swept  from  their  homes  in  the 
Himalayas  with  destructive  force  down  upon  the  plains. 
These  do  not  represent  one  religion,  but  distinct  religions, 
or  rather  many  different  religions,  each  with  its  own  customs, 


SgO  THE  GODHEAD  NEITHER  HINDU  NOR  GREEK. 


festivals,  modes  and  objects  of  worship,  and  even  geographical 
distribution.  Then  the  Brahma  (neuter)  in  whom  they  are 
co-ordinated  is  the  universal  substance  or  soul  ; of  him  or  it 
all  phenomenal  being  is  a manifestation.  He  is  no  conscious 
reason,  no  home  of  ethical  relations  and  distinctions,  but  only 
the  ultimate  essence  or  basis  of  all  things.  Every  god  and 
every  man  and  every  creature  is  in  him  as  much  as  the  sacred 
triad,  and  in  all  he  appears  or  becomes  incarnate.  In  other 
words,  the  system  is  a polytheistic  and  mythological  Pantheism. 
But  the  Christian  idea  is  the  opposite  of  all  this.  God  is 
personal,  conscious,  ethical ; the  Godhead  expresses  this  per- 
sonal, conscious,  and  ethical  being  as  immanent  and  essential. 
Man  cannot  be  absorbed  into  God,  or  God  individualized  and 
distributed  in  man.  The  Persons  in  the  Godhead  are  incap- 
able of  absorption  into  more  abstract  forms  of  being  ; they 
represent  God  not  as  an  ever  unfolding  and  enfolding  sub- 
stance, but  as  a necessary  and  eternal  communion,  the  home 
of  life  and  love. 

The  affinities  with  Greece  seem  more  natural,  and,  so  far  as 
real,  they  indicated  necessities  of  thought  which  the  Christian 
Godhead  satisfied.  No  modern  theologian  would  maintain 
with  Cud  worth  that  the  Christian  Trinity  could  be  found  in 
Plato  ^ ; nor  would  any  modern  scholar  argue  with  Vossius  that 
the  Godhead  was  represented  by  certain  triads  in  the  Greek 
and  Latin  mythologies,^  or  with  Creuzer  that  there  was  em- 
balmed in  the  figures  and  songs  of  the  temples  an  ancient 
intuition  of  a triad  or  deity  which  was  three-in-one.^  But  the 
affinities  are  now  sought  in  speculative  tendencies  and  phrases, 
especially  those  of  the  Hellenistic  and  Alexandrian  philosophies,* 
which  show  thought  feeling  after  some  mode  of  breaking  up, 
as  it  were,  the  solitude  of  Deity,  and  saving  Him  from  the 
impotence  which  clings  to  a mere  isolated  Absolute.  These 

> “ Intellectual  Sys.,”  vol.  ii.,  pp.  364  ff. 

* “ De  Theol.  Gentili.,”  lib.  viii.,  c.  12. 

* “ Symbolik  und  Mythol.,”  vol.  i.,  p.  45. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE. 


397 


affinities  are  represented  by  the  ideas  of  Plato,  the  logos  of 
the  Stoics  and  of  Philo,  and  the  aeons  of  the  Gnostics  ; and 
they  no  doubt  signify  attempts  to  discover  categories  under 
which  the  Infinite  could  be  conceived  as  related  to  the  finite, 
as  actual  in  Himself  and  as  active  within  it.  In  this  respect 
they  have  the  greatest  possible  significance  for  the  need  of  the 
Godhead  in  order  to  the  conception  of  a really  living  God.  But 
their  meaning  is  primarily  philosophical,  while  the  Christian 
idea  is  primarily  religious.  It  is  the  creation  of  our  supreme 
religious  consciousness,  and  it  satisfies  our  supreme  religious 
need.  The  love  which  the  Godhead  makes  immanent  and 
essential  to  God,  gives  God  an  altogether  new  meaning  and 
actuality  for  religion-;  while  thought  is  not  forced  to  conceive 
Monotheism  as  the  apotheosis  of  an  almighty  will  or  an 
impersonal  ideal  of  the  pure  reason. 

§ IV.— The  Godhead  as  a Doctrine. 

There  is  indeed  to  be  no  attempt  made  here  at  a scholastic 
or  scientific  construction  of  the  doctrine.  This  would  not  be 
a difficult  thing  to  do,  for  it  is  easy  to  combine  the  ancient 
terms  into  reasonable  formulae  ; yet  our  purpose  is  not  to 
express  in  familiar  technical  language  the  conclusions  of  the 
schools,  but  to  exhibit  and  to  emphasize  the  source,  signifi- 
cance, and  bearings  of  those  essential  ideas  which  every 
doctrine  of  the  Godhead  has  aimed  at  expressing,  yet  has 
often  failed  to  express. 

I.  The  doctrine  of  the  Godhead  is,  in  origin  and  essence, 
an  attempt  to  represent  to  thought  the  determinative  element 
in  the  consciousness  of  Christ.  He  is  God’s  Son;  and  because 
Son  of  God,  He  becomes  Son  of  man.  The  filial  relation 
to  man  is  the  temporal  form  of  the  eternal  relation  to  God. 
This  Sonship  is  so  essential  to  His  consciousness  that  He 
would  not  be  what  He  is  without  it — 2>.,  He  would  not  be 
at  all. 


398 


THE  GODHEAD  NO  MODAL  TRINIT\ 


2.  What  is  true  of  Him  as  the  ideal  Son  of  man,  is  true  of 
the  humanity  He  embodies.  It,  too,  is  son  of  God,  exists 
before  the  mind  and  heart  of  God  as  son,  and  has  so  existed 
ever  since  it  was  conceived — i.e.,  in  our  time-conditioned 
speech,  from  eternity.  But  this  filial  relation  of  the  created 
to  God  is  made  possible  by  Fatherhood  and  Sonship  being 
eternal  in  God — i.e.,  no  matters  of  will,  but  of  nature,  facts  of 
His  essence,  not  results  or  products  of  choice  or  volition.  It 
is  this  idea  that  comes  into  being  with  Christ.  Fatherhood 
is  the  essence  of  God,  therefore  Sonship  is  the  same  ; and 
both  are  realized  in  the  only  forms  and  under  the  only 
conditions  possible  where  God  is  concerned — outside  or  above 
the  categories  of  space  and  time,  where  all  distinctions  of  here 
and  there,  before  and  after,  alike  cease. 

3.  The  distinctions  these  terms  denote  are  immanent  and 
essential.  No  theory  of  external  modes  or  manifestational 
forms  and  aspects  can  satisfy  the  conditions.  For  what  we 
need  is  not  a variety  in  our  modes  and  forms  of  apprehending 
Deity,  but  such  a conception  as  realizes  Deity — as,  if  we  may 
so  speak,  represents  Him  to  the  imagination  as  an  organism 
whose  life  is  love,  active  and  passive,  a loving  and  being  loved. 
The  Sabellian  notion  is  as  shallow  as  it  is  false ; it  may 
satisfy  the  intellect  which  thinks  that  the  mysteries  of  the 
Divine  nature  are  amply  explained  if  stated  in  terms  which 
can  be  worked  into  the  processes  of  formal  logic.  But  the 
supreme  necessity  of  faith  is  one  with  the  ultimate  necessity 
of  thought — viz.,  a God  who  can  be  related  to  the  universe,  one 
who  is  not  an  infinite  abstraction  or  empty  simplicity,  but 
who  is  by  nature  a living  and,  as  it  were,  productive  and 
producing  Being.  To  be  this  He  must  have  immanent  and 
essential  modes  and  forms  of  activity,  and  because  He  has 
these  He  may  have  outer  relations  created  by  energies  freely 
exercised. 

4.  These  inner  and  essential  modes  or  forms  are  not  known 
to  us  by  nature,  but  by  revelation.  Reason  may  see  that 


THE  ONLY  SIGNIFICANT  DISTINCTIONS  REAL.  399 


they  must  be  if  God  is  to  be  a living  God,  but  what  they  are 
can  be  known  only  if  He  spontaneously  speak  or  reveal 
Himself  This  He  did  in  Jesus  Christ ; and  what  He  showed 
was  the  Father-Sonship.  There  may  be  other  infinite  modes 
and  forms,  but  here  we  know  only  what  has  been  made  known. 
The  terms  used  are  personal,  denote  personal  relations,  and 
these  of  the  tenderest  order  ; but  they  are  relations  realized 
under  the  forms  of  the  Divine  and  Infinite,  not  of  the  finite. 
Beside  Father  and  Son  one  other  such  personal  mode  we 
know — the  Holy  Spirit.  He  proceeds  from  the  Father  and 
the  Son,  is  co-ordinated  with  them,  has  the  same  rank  and  the 
same  essential  being  ; and  has  the  function,  so  far  as  the  outer 
relations  are  concerned,  of  being  the  agent  through  which 
the  Fatherhood  is  ever  presented  that  the  sonship  may  be 
realized  without  as  it  exists  within. 

5.  As  the  conception  is  peculiarly  and  specifically  a con- 
ception of  revealed  religion,  it  ought,  when  articulated  into 
a doctrine,  to  be  stated  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  terms 
and  according  to  the  Spirit  of  the  revelation.  The  Greek 
terminology  was  mainly  philosophical,  and  what  it  did  was  to 
translate  the  conception  into  a philosophy  rather  than  into 
a theology.  It  is  well  that  we  distinguish  even  the  most 
audacious  and  brilliant  translations  from  the  original  and 
the  reality.  Ovaia  is  the  abstract  now  of  God,  now  of  the 
Godhead  ; but  we  shall  know  better  what  we  mean  if  we  keep 
to  the  concrete,  and  speak  of  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit  as  one 
God.  He  is  one,  but  not  as  the  atom  or  monad  is  one,  but 
as  the  organism.  He  is  a unity  ; but  a unity  and  a simplicity 
are  opposites — the  one  is  the  synonym  of  indiscrete  and 
undifferentiated  being,  but  the  other  of  being  rich,  complex, 
manifold.  An  infinite  simplicity  were  incapable  of  movement 
or  relation,  but  an  infinite  unity  must  be  the  bosom  of  all 
distinction  and  difference.  God  is  a unity,  but  He  is  not 
a simplicity,  and  so  can  be  more  truly  described  in  the  terms 
of  ethical  and  concrete  than  of  metaphysical  and  abstract 


400 


THE  NEW  PROBLEM. 


existence.  “Person”  may  be  an  excellent  name  for  those 
immanent  distinctions  we  know  as  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit, 
who  together  constitute  the  unity  of  God.  It  does  not  mean 
individual,  a single,  separated  being,  incapable  of  further 
division,  and  so  may  well  denote  those  modes  or  forms  of 
inner  being  which  realize  without  dissolving  the  unity.  But 
we  are  nearer  reality  if  we  conceive  God  in  the  terms  of  the 
Gospels  than  if  we  define  Him  in  the  categories  of  the 
schools, 

6.  We  have  now  to  see  how  or  in  what  way  the  notion  of 
the  Godhead  affects  our  conception  of  God  and  of  the  world 
to  which  He  stands  related,  and  whether  it  is  capable  of  being 
formulated  into  the  material  or  determinative  principle  of  a 
Christian  Theology. 


CHAPTER  11. 


THE  GODHEAD  AND  THE  DEITY  OF  NA2URAL 
THEOLOGY, 

§ L— God  in  Theism  and  in  Theology. 

IN  order  the  better  to  appreciate  in  what  way  the  notion 
of  the  Godhead  has  affected  the  conception  of  God,  we 
must  distinguish  two  conceptions — the  speculative  or  philo- 
sophical, and  the  positive  or  religious.  There  is  an  idea  of 
Deity  which  is  the  last  deduction  or  final  dream  of  a speculative 
Theism,  and  there  is  an  idea  of  Deity  which  is  the  primary  or 
material  principle  of  constructive  theology  ; and  these  two 
ideas  are  quite  as  remarkable  for  their  differences  as  for  their 
affinities.  In  the  one  case  Deity  is  a name  for  a deduction; 
from  certain  necessities  of  thought,  but  in  the  other  case 
for  the  ultimate  and  causal  reality  of  religion.  Theism  may 
be  satisfied  with  the  rational  basis  or  scientific  form  of  its 
conception,  but  it  has  no  means  or  instrument  that  can 
transform  it  into  the  soul  of  a religion.  Theology  may 
assume  the  legitimacy  of  the  rational  processes  which  have 
given  the  theistic  result,  but  it  cannot  accept  the  result  as 
adequate  or  sufficient  for  its  purpose  ; before  it  can  begin  to 
build  it  must  have  a richer  and  completer  doctrine  of  God. 

Theism  construes  Deity  from  the  standpoint  of  mind  and 
nature — conceives  nature  as  an  effect  which  needs  to  be 
explained,  God  as  its  cause  or  sufficient  reason,  and  mind  as 
the  organ  which  brings  the  two  into  reasoned  relations  or  thq 

26 


402 


IN  THEISM  GOD  IS  ABSTRACT, 


unity  of  an  intelligible  notion.  It  has  to  determine  whether 
there  is  any  evidence  of  His  existence  ; how  He  is  to  be 
conceived,  whether  as  substance  or  reason  or  will  ; how  He 
is  related  to  the  world,  and  whether  He  exercises  over  and 
within  it  a controlling  activity  at  once  intelligent  and  moral. 
But  in  these  discussions  Theism  may  with  equal  truth  be 
described  as  either  the  last  chapter  of  a philosophy  or  the  first 
of  a theology.  Its  methods,  principles,  formulae,  arguments, 
are  all  philosophical : the  systems  it  criticizes  are  the  philo- 
sophies ; the  authorities  it  invokes  arc  philosophers.  God  is 
described  in  the  terms  of  the  schools  ; He  is  either  an  “ Ens 
infinitum  ” or  “ absolutum  ” or  “ unicum,”  or  a “ Causa  efficicns 
prima,”  or  an  “ Intelligens,  a quo  omnes  res  naturales  ordinantur 
in  finem  ” ; He  is  either  the  “ Primum  et  per  se  agens,”  or  the 
“ Ultimus  Finis,”  the  “ Actus  Purus,”  the“  Una  Substantia,”  or 
“ Das  Sein  ” or  “ Der  Geist,”  or  the  “ Unknown  Reality,”  or  the 
“Voluntas,”  by  whose  energy  all  things  are.  As  God  is  in 
Theism  a metaphysical,  so  nature  is  a physical  abstraction,  as 
it  were  the  system  of  things  reduced  to  a synthesis  which 
shall  more  or  less  co-ordinate  and  accommodate  both  the 
demands  of  science  and  the  necessities  of  religion  ; while  being 
has  its  qualities  denoted  by  terms  like  “ good  ” and  “ evil,” 
which  have  an  ethical  connotation,  but  not  always  an  ethical 
sense. 

But  in  constructive  theology  the  questions  and  the  categories 
are  altogether  different.  Thought  here  starts  with  the  data 
and  the  beliefs,  the  consciousness  and  the  principles,  of  a 
religion  and  the  religious  society.  God  is  a being  whose 
existence  is  accepted  and  assumed  ; He  has  been  an  object  of 
worship  before  He  has  become  a subject  of  thought,  and  so  the 
thinker  has  not  to  create  Him  for  experience,  but  to  interpret 
Him  through  the  experience  which  He  has  created.  He  is  not 
the  unity  of  physical  functions  and  metaphysical  attributes, 
which  Theism  seeks  to  discover  and  at  once  to  personalize  and 
keep  impersonal  ; but  He  is  the  concrete  spiritual  and  ethical 


IN  THEOLOGY  HE  IS  CONCRETE. 


403 


Being  of  religion,  who  is  for  the  intellect  because  He  has  been 
for  the  conscience  and  the  heart,  who  is  for  thought  because 
He  lives  in  a religion  and  has  come  through  a revelation. 
And  the  world  theology  has  to  interpret  is  as  concrete  as  the 
God.  It  is  not  the  abstract  nature  of  Theism,  but  the  world 
of  actual  men,  with  all  that  lies  as  history  behind  and  all  that 
lives  as  passion,  sin,  belief,  hope,  and  reason  within  them — men 
with  all  their  religions  and  irreligions,  states  and  institutions  of 
good  and  evil.  Theology,  in  a word,  is  the  science  of  a living 
God  and  of  His  work  in  and  for  a living  world. 

Now,  the  supreme  difficulty  of  Theism  and  Theology  is  one: 
How  shall  we  conceive  God  ? And  what  we  seek  from  the 
doctrine  of  the  Godhead  is  help  towards  the  solution  of  this 
difficulty.  Of  all  forms  of  apologetic,  what  we  may  term  the 
tu  qiioque  is  the  most  vacant  and  debased.  It  is  a poor 
defence  for  revealed  religion  to  say,  “ Natural  religion  has 
difficulties  as  many  and  as  grave.”  Two  insolubles,  a revealed 
and  a natural,  ought  to  make  a man  less  rather  than  more 
contented  with  his  faith  ; and  though  revelation  does  not  create 
the  belief  in  God,  it  ought  to  supply  us  with  a conception  of 
Him  that  shall  lighten  some  of  the  darkness  amid  which  the 
spirit  gropes  when  it  seeks  to  see  God  face  to  face,  and  to 
know  His  world  somewhat  as  it  is  known  to  Him.  And  so 
we  have  meanwhile  a twofold  question  : How  does  the  doctrine 
of  the  Godhead  affect  the  conception  of  God,  first,  in  natural, 
secondly,  in  revealed  theology  ? 

§ 1 1. — The  Godhead  and  the  Character  of  God. 

We  may  describe  the  change  which  the  notion  of  the 
Godhead  effects  in  the  conception  of  God  by  saying,  that  it 
completely  ethicizes  the  conception.  The  history,  whether  of 
religion  or  philosophy,  shows  that  there  is  indeed  nothing 
harder  to  thought  than  to  conceive  God  as  a moral  being, 
though  it  is  relatively  easy  to  conceive  Him  as  the  source 


404 


THE  UNETHICIZED  CONCEPTION  OF  GOD 


of  all  the  moralities.  He  can  be  the  latter  as  reason  or 
idea  or  will,  but  He  can  be  the  former  only  as  it  belongs 
to  His  essence  or  nature  to  exist  in  a state  of  conditioned 
and  related,  or  ethical  and  social  activity.  God  was  to 
Judaism  a lawgiver,  the  source  of  His  people’s  morals,  but 
He  was  not  in  the  strict  sense  moral.  His  nature  was 
legalized  rather  than  ethicized.  The  law  He  instituted  was 
positive,  the  creation  of  His  will  rather  than  the  transcript 
of  His  nature.  On  this  will  His  relations  to  Israel  and 
Israel’s  to  Him  were  based  ; it  was  because  He  so  willed  that 
they  were  His  people  and  He  their  God.  He  was  indeed 
conceived  to  be  holy  and  righteous,  just  and  merciful,  but 
He  was  these  things  within  the  terms  of  the  covenant  and 
according  to  the  measure  of  His  law.  It  was  not  felt  to 
involve  any  contradiction  to  the  idea  of  Him  that  He  should 
be  the  God  of  the  Jews  only,  though  the  writer,  whose  con- 
ception most  nearly  approached  the  ethical,  showed  signs  of 
feeling  it.  It  would  be  much  too  unqualified  to  say  that  He 
was  to  the  common  mind  like  the  Oriental  sovereign,  who 
may  be  the  source  both  of  law  and  morality  without  being 
either  lawful  or  moral  ; but  at  least  we  may  say  this — that 
the  law  was  the  regulative  idea,  and  the  Divine  nature  and 
relations  were  conceived  under  legal  rather  than  moral  cate- 
gories. So  inveterate  was  this  regulative  idea  that  Paul  could 
not  quite  emancipate  himself  from  it.  When  he  reasons  as 
a Jew  with  Jews  on  the  question  of  their  vocation,  it  becomes 
to  him  a matter  of  will,  settled  by  an  appeal  to  the  Divine 
Sovereignty  as  absolute  and  ultimate.  His  argument  as  to 
the  election  of  Israel  is  a complete  contrast  to  his  argument 
in  proof  of  the  righteousness  by  faith.  The  essence  of  the 
one  is  the  conditioned,  of  the  other  the  unconditioned,  action 
of  God.  The  field  of  the  action  may  differ ; in  the  one  case 
it  may  be  the  history  and  function  of  a people,  in  the  other 
the  change  and  salvation  of  a person  ; but  the  significant 
thing  is,  that  though  both  fields  are  moral,  the  point  empha- 


IN  ISRAEL  AND  IN  GREECE. 


405 


sized  in  the  one  case  is  the  unmoral  power,  but  in  the  other 
the  moral  and  conditioned  grace.  The  truth  is,  Paul  argues 
not  as  an  Apostle  with  Christians  but  as  a Jew  with  Jews 
when  he  says,  “ God  is  a potter,  men  are  clay  ; He  can  as 
He  pleases  make  one  vessel  to  honour  and  another  to  dis- 
honour, and  who  can  resist  His  will  But  where  Deity  is 
ethicized  He  cannot  be  spoken  of  as  a potter  or  man  as 
clay.  The  use  of  the  figure  means  that  God’s  power  is  con- 
ceived as  physical,  but  where  it  is  conceived  as  moral  the 
analogy  becomes  not  only  irrelevant  but  false. 

But  in  Greece  the  theistic  conception,  while  more  abstract 
and  general,  was  even  less  ethicized  than  in  Israel ; as  in 
the  latter  it  was  more  political  than  moral,  in  the  former  it 
was  more  metaphysical.  The  difference  was  one  of  nature 
because  of  source.  The  Hebrew  state  was  a creation  of 
Deity  ; the  Greek  Deity  was  a creation  of  mind.  To  the 
Jew  God  was  the  head  of  his  state  and  the  being  he 
worshipped,  but  to  the  Greek  the  One  God  was  the  last 
deduction  of  thought  and  its  supreme  object.  The  reason 
that  reached  Him  defined  Him  ; He  was  interpreted  in  its 
terms,  clothed  in  its  attributes,  but  did  not  transcend  its  cate- 
gories— i.e.j  He  remained  abstract,  logical,  impersonal.  The 
ideas  of  reason  are  its  ultimate  realities  ; but  it  is  of  their 
essence  to  be  ideas,  to  refuse  to  become  actual,  to  defy  ethical 
impersonation.  Out  of  them  ethics  may  be  deduced,  but  they 
are  themselves  metaphysical — beget  life,  induce  action,  but 
cannot  themselves  live  and  act.  So  Plato’s  God  may  be 
termed  the  good,  or  the  beautiful,  or  the  true  ; but  He  is 
personalized  when  the  philosopher  becomes  a poet  only  to 
be  depersonalized  when  the  poet  relapses  into  the  philo- 
sopher. The  invariable  tendency  in  metaphysics  is  to  the 
de-ethicization  of  a Deity  who  can  be  described  in  terms 
neuter  and  abstract  rather  than  personal  and  moral. 

But  in  contrast  to  these  stands  the  Apostolic  conception. 

' I\om.  ix.  19-24. 


4o6 


THE  CHRISTIAN  AN  ETHICIZED  GOD. 


God  was  one  to  whom  Fatherhood  and  therefore  Sonship 
were  immanent.  Personal  and  therefore  moral  relation  was 
of  the  very  essence  of  His  being.  A God  who  could  not  be 
without  a Son  was  a God  who  could  not  be  without  moral 
qualities  in  exercise.  The  relations  that  belonged  to  the  very 
constitution  by  virtue  of  which  He  was  God,  involved  moral 
character,  duties,  ends.  We  shall  utterly  misconceive  the 
Apostolic  mind  if  we  reduce  the  terms  Father  and  Son 
and  Spirit  into  rigid  ontological  symbols  ; the  realities  they 
denote  are  ethical,  metaphors  of  necessity,  but  metaphors  of 
the  kind  the  imagination  uses  when  it  speaks  of  a world 
unrealized  in  the  language  of  the  real.  Father  and  Son  do 
not  hVre  denote  a Paternity  and  a Sonship  that  begin  to 
be,  for  in  the  region  of  the  eternal  all  the  categories  of  time 
cease;  but  they  denote  states,  relations,  that  ever  were  and 
ever  must  be  in  God.  In  Him  the  paternal  feeling  is  eternal, 
and  the  paternal  cannot  be  without  the  filial  ; and  for  these 
to  be  means  that  He  is  the  infinite  home  of  all  the  moral 
emotions  with  all  their  correlative  activities.  God  conceived 
as  Godhead  is  the  very  manifold  of  exercised  and  realized 
moral  being — a manifold  that  may  be  reduced  by  metaphysics, 
whether  Theistic  or  Pantheistic,  Nicene  or  neo-Platonic,  to 
the  barrenness  of  the  wilderness.  The  main  thing  is  to 
adhere  to  the  ethical  realities  : the  thing  we  cannot  afford 
to  lose  is  what  was  won  for  us  from  the  consciousness  of 
Christ  and  its  Apostolic  interpretation.  To  hold  the  eternal 
Father-Sonship  of  God  is  to  hold  the  essential  graciousness 
of  His  being,  and  the  necessary  grace  of  all  His  acts. 


§ HI.— The  Godhead  as  it  affects  the  Notions  of 
Creator  and  the  Creation. 

I.  The  gravest  difficulties  of  Theism  are  the  initial — those 
concerned  with  the  idea  of  the  Creator  rather  than  of  the 
creation.  The  empirical  evidences  of  His  being  would  be 


RELATION  OF  GOD  TO  THE  WORLD. 


407 


invincible  were  they  not  confronted  and  overpowered  by  the 
more  invincible  antinomies  of  the  pure  reason.  The  categories 
that  describe  the  Deity  of  pure  thought  are  rather  those 
of  being  than  of  relation  and  action.  The  difficulties  which 
the  criticism  of  Kant  so  emphasized,  in  the  attempt  to  rise 
from  the  phenomenal  to  the  transcendental,  have  their 
counterpart  in  the  difficulty  of  descending  from  the  trans- 
cendental to  the  phenomenal.  It  is  harder  to  connect  the 
Uncreated  with  the  created  than  to  connect  the  created 
with  the  Uncreated — i.e.,  the  logical  process  which  seeks  to 
prove  that  contingent  being  must  have  had  an  origin  and 
a sufficient  reason,  is  much  simpler  and  more  coherent  than 
the  process  which  would  prove  that  the  primary  being  is 
a personal  Cause,  who  consciously  and  freely  willed  to  make 
the  world.  For  the  difficulty  in  the  latter  case  begins  with 
the  very  premiss  ; not  merely.  How  shall  it  be  proved  ? but, 
How  shall  it  be  formulated?  The  creation  either  was  or 
was  not  eternal.  If  it  was,  then  as  it  never  began  to  be,  it 
had  no  cause,  has  a being  independent,  necessary — i.e.^  is 
but  a form  of  the  only  Divine  that  is.  If  it  was  not  eternal, 
then  why  did  it  begin  to  be  ? The  Creator  made  it ; but 
why  did  He  make  it  ? and  what  was  He  doing  before 
creation  ? Either  He  was  idle  or  He  was  active.  If  He  was 
idle,  then  He  could  not  be  a perfect  or  even  a good  being  : 
if  He  was  active,  then  was  not  this  activity  creative,  and 
does  not  this  mean  that  creation  was  eternal  ? Then  what 
moved  Him  to  act?  If  He  was  a being  of  absolute  simplicity. 
He  could  have  no  motive  within  ; and  as  there  was  no 
creation,  no  motive  could  come  to  Him  from  without ; and 
even  supposing  it  had  come,  it  could  in  His  absolute  simplicity 
have  found  nothing  to  which  it  could  have  appealed.  And 
even  then,  if  it  had  been  able  to  move  Him,  it  would,  as  finite 
and  shot  out  of  nothing,  have  represented  only  the  dominion 
of  chance  over  the  creative  and  causal  Will. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  the  difficulty  in  the  dialectical 


4o8 


THE  ETHICIZED  AS  ACTUALIZED  DEITY 


process  that  would  reason  from  the  First  Cause  downwards 
is  initial.  If  this  Cause  is  conceived  to  be  God,  how  is  God 
to  be  conceived?  If  we  use  abstract  or  impersonal  terms, 
we  may  succeed  in  elaborating  a coherent  theory.  We  may 
state  our  notion  of  the  Cause  in  the  terms  of  Spinoza,  and 
translate  “ Deus  ” by  “ Substantia  ” ; or  in  the  terms  of  Hegel, 
and,  identifying  pure  Being  with  pure  Thought,  resolve  creation 
into  a process  of  dialectical  or  logical  unfolding  ; or  in  the  terms 
of  Spencer,  and  make  the  Ultimate  the  Unknown  which  is 
manifested  to  us  as  persistent  force.  But  these  are  theories 
of  being  rather  than  of  creation,  conceiving  phenomena  as 
modes  of  the  absolute  rather  than  effects  of  personal  will. 
If  we  hold  that  the  Creator  is  conscious  and  personal  Deity, 
yet  demand  that  He  be  as  simple  as  a form  of  abstract 
and  impersonal  being,  we  are  at  once  involved  in  all  the 
difficulties  of  a beginning  that  cannot  be  conceived  without 
a negation  of  Divine  perfection,  and  of  motives  and  move- 
ments that  cannot  be  represented  in  thought  without  a denial 
of  the  Divine  simplicity.  These  are  the  difficulties  that  have 
made  our  Pantheisms,  Materialisms,  and  Agnosticisms  seem 
so  reasonable.  From  the  standpoint  of  an  ordered  universe 
nothing  seems  so  inevitable  as  the  inference  of  a causal  and 
an  ordering  Mind;  but  from  the  infinite  Mind  as  the  stand- 
point or  principle  of  thought,  nothing  is  so  full  of  perplexities 
and  mutually  exclusive  or  destructive  contradictions  as  the 
dialectical  process  that  would  relate  the  creative  action,  on 
the  one  hand,  to  the  Creator  and  His  past,  and,  on  the  other, 
the  creation  to  the  creative  Person  or  Will. 

2.  But  the  Godhead  with  its  completely  ethicized  Deity 
mitigates  the  gravest  of  these  initial  difficulties  of  Theism. 
It  does  no  more  than  mitigate,  for  no  more  is  possible  ; but 
this  mitigation  represents  an  immense  gain  to  thought. 
What  increases  the  conceivability  of  the  Divine  action  makes 
Theism  more  rationally  credible,  and  so  tends  to  beget  and 


IS  SOLUTION  OF  THEISTIC  DIFFICULTIES. 


409 


develop  a view  as  to  the  order  and  end  of  the  universe  as 
moral  as  the  Deity  from  whom  and  for  whom  it  is. 

A.  The  Godhead  compels  us  to  conceive  God  as  conditioned 
in  His  very  being.  It  belongs  to  His  essence  to  exist  under 
and  within  relations.  No  abstract  of  pure  thought,  no 
generalization  from  our  sensuous  experiences,  can  denote  or 
describe  Him.  The  more  we  attempt  in  obedience  to  some 
process  of  inexorable  logic  to  rarefy  our  notion  of  the  causal 
Being,  the  less  are  we  able  to  conceive  the  Being  as  cause. 
Abstract  terms  like  “Being,”  “Substance,”  “the  Unknown,” 
“the  Unconditioned,”  “the  Absolute,”  are  the  results  or  residue 
of  mental  processes,  but  represent  nothing  that  can  be  con- 
ceived as  a real  causality.  If  we  speak  of  simple  homogeneous 
matter  or  force,  we  speak  of  something  we  do  not  know 
to  exist,  that  we  cannot  conceive  as  existing  without  our 
own  conscious  experience,  and  that  no  authentic  act  of  the 
constructive  imagination  can  make  into  the  cause  or^ sufficient 
reason  of  a varied  and  reasonable  universe.  Out  of  an 
abstract  of  thought  we  cannot  evolve  the  concrete  of  ex- 
perience ; for  the  very  terms  that  define  and  express  our 
ultimate  abstraction  take  from  it  the  power  or  faculty  of 
creative  movement.  But  if  we  take  the  supreme  religious 
consciousness  of  man  as  our  interpretative  medium  and 
conceive  God  as  the  Godhead,  then  our  primary  and  causal 
existence  ceases  to  be  simple,  abstract,  dead,  and  becomes 
complex,  concrete,  living.  He  is  never  out  of  relation  ; it 
is  His  nature  to  be  related,  and  He  cannot  be  without  His 
related  states  and  distinctions.  What  we  call  the  Persons 
of  the  Godhead  are  activities,  emotional,  intellectual,  ethical, 
always  related  and  always  in  exercise.  The  Absolute  is  not 
mere  indifference,  or  substance  homogeneous  and  indiscrete, 
but  infinite  differences  belong  to  His  nature.  Creation  was 
for  God  not  the  beginning  of  action  ; He  was  by  essence 
active  because  a Godhead.  He  did  not  change  from  un- 
conditioned to  conditioned  being ; His  being  as  related  is 


410  ETERNAL  FATHERHOOD  IS  ESSENTIAL  LOVE, 


conditioned  in  all  its  activities.  To  conceive  God  as  God- 
head therefore  is  to  escape  the  paralyzing  abstractions  of 
metaphysics,  transcendental  and  empirical,  pantheistic  and 
agnostic.  Our  Cause  is  a concrete  of  such  infinite  fulness 
and  variety  that  we  can  well  conceive  Him  as  the  ideal 
home  and  efficient  energy  of  the  universe. 

B.  But  the  relations  and  activities  immanent  in  the 
Godhead  are  less  physical  than  ethical,  denoted  by  terms 
expressive  of  the  purest  emotions  and  the  most  creative 
and  dependent  relations  known  to  man — Fatherhood  and 
Sonship.  These  represent  love  as  native  to  God,  and  as 
eternal  as  God.  For  Him  it  never  began  to  be,  for  this 
is  the  meaning  of  the  eternal  Sonship.  The  love  of  man 
has  a potential  before  it  has  an  actual  being ; he  has  the 
capability  of  loving  before  the  reality  of  love  ; but  the  love 
of  God  had  always  an  actual,  never  a potential  being,  for 
only  so  could  it  be  perfect  love.  In  man  love  is  born  of 
the  meeting  of  susceptible  subject  and  attractive  object,  but 
in  God  the  absolute  love  had  ever  perfect  reason  and  room 
for  active  being.  Man  can  never  know  a father’s  affection 
until  he  be  a father,  or  woman  a mother’s  love  unless  she 
be  a mother.  The  capacity  may  be  there,  but  only  the 
capacity,  the  aptitude  to  be,  not  the  actual  being.  But 
the  Godhead  means  that  as  the  Fatherhood  and  Sonship 
have  been  eternal,  so  also  has  the  love.  It  signifies  that 
God  is  not  the  eternal  possibility  but  the  eternal  actuality 
of  love.  Hence  creation  did  not  mean  for  God  the  be- 
ginning of  love,  or  even  any  increase  of  it.  It  might  be 
an  increase  in  the  objects,  but  not  in  the  affection.  The 
Son  was  to  the  Father  the  universe  ; infinite.  He  could 
absorb  without  exhausting  the  affection,  while  the  infinite 
affection  could  be  distributed  without  being  diminished  or 
withdrawn. 

C.  But  this  eternal  love  explains  the  causal  impulse,  the 
beginning  of  the  creation  of  God.  Love  may  be  described  as 


AND  LOVE  AN  ETERNAL  WILL  OF  GOOD.  411 

a need  that  can  be  satisfied  only  by  giving.  What  is  needed 
is  another,  susceptible,  receptive,  akin  ; what  is  given  is  the 
best  self  of  the  needing,  all  of  himself  he  has  to  bestow.  Lotze  ^ 
has  defined  “the  good  in  itself”  as  enjoyed  or  realized 
felicity ; what  we  term  “ goods  ” are  means,  and  become 
good  only  as  transmuted  into  this ; for  outside  a feeling, 
willing,  and  thinking  spirit  good  has  no  being.  But  what 
in  its  nature  is  this  good,  this  realized  felicity  ? “ It  is  the 

living  love . which  wills  the  happiness  of  others.”  And 
even  this  is  God  ; He  is  the  supreme  good  which  is  realized 
beatitude,  “ the  living  love  which  wills  the  happiness  ” of  all 
being.  But  if  He  wills  its  happiness,  the  life  must  also  be 
willed ; there  must  be  existence  that  there  may  be  felicity. 
And  so  He  wills  to  create,  that  the  happiness  He  has  willed 
may  be  realized.  And  this  precisely  is  love,  seeking  another 
that  He  may  give  to  the  other  He  seeks  all  within  Himself 
that  is  best  worth  giving.  And  this  love  is  creation,  which 
is  but  God’s  method  of  obeying  His  love  in  order  to  the 
realization  of  the  felicity  He  has  willed.  And  so  Rothe 
argues  that  love  and  creation  are  alike  in  this — each  is 
a spontaneous  and  free  giving,  a communication  of  God 
Himself,  proceeding  out  of  His  beatitude  in  order  to  the 
being  of  beatitude.  Love  is  no  external  attribute,  needing 
created  relations  in  order  to  its  exercise,  for  it  was  before 
creation,  and  creation  was  through  it ; and  it  is  no  attribute 
of  pure  immanence,  for  though  it  lives  within  Deity,  and 
has  there  the  necessary  conditions  of  its  life,  yet  it  ever 
strives  from  within  outwards,  struggles,  as  it  were,  towards 
creation.  And  so  Rothe  defines  love  as  the  transitive 
element  in  the  immanent  being  of  God,  and,  consequently, 
as  the  bond  which  binds  together  His  inner  and  His  outer 
attributes  and  action.  There  must  be  eternal  love  that 
creation  may  be.  Creation  must  be  that  eternal  love  may 


^ “ Mikrokosmus,”  vol.  iii.,  p.  608, 


412  CREATION  NECESSARY,  CREATOR  NOT  NECESSITATED. 

realize  the  happiness  it  willed.  “ The  whole  life  and  activity 
of  God  ad  exU'a  is  a loving.”  ^ 

D,  This  conception  may  help  us  to  conceive  why  and 
how  creation  was  necessary  while  the  Creator  was  not  necessi- 
tated. Franz  Hoffmann  has  most  truly  said  : “ Nothing  has 
given  to  Pantheism  a greater  appearance  of  reasonableness, 
and  consequently  of  truth,  than  the  idea  that  every  theistic 
theory  proceeds  necessarily  upon  the  supposition  of  a certain 
contingency  of  creation,  and  that  the  affirmation.  Creation  is 
a free  act  of  God,  is  identical  with  the  affirmation,  It  is  a 
contingent  or  accidental  act  of  God.  But  whoever  attributes 
contingency  to  God  subjects  Him,  only  in  a manner  exactly 
the  opposite  of  the  pantheistic,  to  blind  fate.”  ^ This  is  true,  for 
chance  and  fate  are  more  nearly  synonyms  than  contraries. 
Both  terms  are  expressive  of  ignorance,  inability  to  explain 
the  cause  or  reason  of  the  system  or  some  part  of  the  system 
to  which  we  belong.  Chance  is  fate  in  things  individual,  falling 
out  separately,  though  concurrently  ; fate  is  chance  in  things 
collective,  so  falling  out  together  as  to  seem  a system.  Both  are 
blind,  neither  is  a reason  for  the  existence  or  occurrence  of  any- 
thing, only  an  obscure  way  of  saying  that  no  reason  is  known 
or  has  been  found.  If,  then,  we  so  conceive  the  Divine  will  to 
create  that  it  appears  as  arbitrary,  or  has  in  it  any  element  of 
accident  or  chance,  we  do  not  find  in  God  the  sufficient  reason 
of  creation:  He  is  not  the  supreme  or  the  first  and  final  Cause, 
but  above  Him  stands  some  one  or  some  thing  which  moves 
His  will,  makes  Him  an  instrument,  is  His  God. 

This  is  one  of  the  invincible  difficulties  of  natural  Theism 
which  we  may  justly  expect  revelation  to  solve,  or  indicate 
whether  there  be  any  way  to  a solution.  And  the  solution  lies 
in  the  love  that  must  will  the  happiness  of  others,  and  in  order 
to  their  happiness  must  will  their  being.  Julius  Muller,  indeed, 
argued  against  the  position  of  Rothe, — his  man  “ einer  mittel- 

‘ “Theol.  Ethik.,”  vol.  i.,  pp.  i66,  167. 

2 Baader’s  “ Werke,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  4,  footnote  by  Hoffmann. 


PHYSICAL  NECESSITY  AND  MORAL  NEED. 


413 


alterlich  romantischenPhantasie,” — that  “if  God  had  need  of  the 
world,  therefore  of  a being  different  from  Himself,  in  order  to  be 
what  He  is  according  to  His  essence — viz.,  love — then  this  very 
love  were  not  absolutely  perfect.”  ^ This  is  true  enough,  for 
it  is  in  a sense  the  premiss  of  our  argument,  but  it  is  not  here 
relevant  or  in  place.  What  is  argued  is  not  that  God  in  order 
to  be  love  must  create,  but  something  altogether  different — 
viz.,  since  God  is  according  to  His  essence  love.  He  could 
not  but  be  determined  to  the  creative  act.  There  is  an 
absolute  difference  between  physical  necessity  and  moral 
need  ; they  are  not  only  opposites,  but  contradictories. 
Physical  necessity  is  the  negation  of  freedom  ; moral  need  is 
its  affirmation.  Physical  necessity  is  objective,  the  com- 
pulsion of  a power  without  and  above ; but  moral  need  is 
subjective,  a spontaneous  and  rational  movement,  obedience 
to  the  idea  or  law  of  one’s  own  nature.  The  imperiousness 
of  the  need,  the  measure  of  the  constraint,  whether  it  does 
or  does  not  leave  the  possibility  of  opposed  tendencies,  depends 
on  the  nature  which  gives  the  law.  Where  in  a subject  hate 
is  as  possible  as  love,  both  nature  and  love  are  imperfect ; but 
where  the  nature  is  perfect,  so  will  be  the  love  ; the  subject 
will  have  no  choice  whether  he  will  love  or  not  love — he  must 
love,  the  very  perfection  of  his  nature  not  allowing  him  to  do 
otherwise.  Yet  this  necessity,  if  we  may  now  so  call  it,  is 
freedom,  the  act  of  a Being  so  perfect  that  action  and  essence, 
thought  and  will,  intelligence  and  nature,  are  unities  and 
incapable  of  difference  or  division.  So  through  the  notion  of 
the  Godhead  we  are  able  to  conceive  a Theism  which  stands 
opposed,  on  the  one  hand,  to  an  unmotived  Deism  or  reign  of 
chance,  and,  on  the  other,  alike  to  the  abstract  necessities  of 
Pantheism  and  the  mechanical  necessities  of  Materialism  ; and 
affirms  that  creation  is  due  to  the  moral  perfection  of  the 
Creator,  who  is  so  essentially  love  that  He  could  not  but 
create  a world  that  He  might  create  beatitude. 

^ “ Christliche  Lehre  von  der  Siinde,”  vol.  ii.,  pp.  184,  185. 


414  DEISM  OR  THE  ABSOLUTE  TRANSCENDENCE. 


§ IV. — The  Godhead  and  Providence. 

I.  The  difficulties  Theism  feels  when  it  tries  to  conceive 
God  as  Creator  meet  it  in  another  form  when  it  attempts 
to  conceive  Him  as  Providence — or  as  Deity  maintaining 
relations  to  the  world  He  has  made.  How  are  nature  and 
God  related  ? Do  they  exclude  or  include  each  other  ? Do 
its  energies  supersede  His  action  ? and  are  its  laws  so  adequate 
to  the  evolution  and  maintenance  of  order  as  to  operate  with- 
out dependence  on  His  will  ? Then  how  does  nature  affect 
God  ? Does  not  the  thing  made  impose  limitations  on  Him 
who  made  it?  But  can  a God  so  limited  by  His  own  creation 
be  as  much  the  infinite  as  when  He  had  all  infinity  to  Him- 
self ? As  theistic  solutions  of  these  problems  we  have  Deism,  or 
God’s  absolute  transcendence,  and  Pantheism,  or  His  absolute 
immanence. 

Deism  conceived  God  as  above  and  apart  from  the  world. 
He  had  so  made  it  that  it  was  a system  complete  in  itself ; 
its  perfection  was  seen  in  its  ability  to  do  its  work  for  an 
indefinite  period  independently  of  Him.  The  proper  analogy  of 
their  relations  was  the  watch  and  its  maker.  Without  the 
maker  the  watch  or  the  world  could  not  be  ; His  was  the  idea 
of  the  whole.  His  the  manufacture  of  the  several  parts,  the  cal- 
culations, the  adjustments,  and  the  first  construction.  Once 
finished.  His  wisdom  was  seen  in  the  length  of  time  nature 
could  go  on  without  repairs,  and  if  repairs  were  needed  they 
could  be  done  only  by  acts  of  “ intervention  ” or  “ interference,” 
stopping  the  whole  or  some  part  of  the  machine  in  order  to 
readjust  the  mechanism.  This  is  very  broadly  but  truly 
stated  ; it  was  the  common  idea  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
carried  out  by  the  deist  to  its  logical  conclusion — the  complete 
separation  or  inter-independence  of  God  and  the  world,  modified 
with  the  help  of  a more  or  less  infirm  logic  by  the  apologist,  so 
as  to  allow  Deity  some  part  and  nterest  in  the  world  He  had 
made.  But  each  had  at  root  the  same  idea  : such  complete 


PANTHEISM  OR  THE  ABSOLUTE  IMMANENCE.  41 5 

transcendence,  that  if  God  acted  in  the  world  at  all  His  action 
was  miraculous,  and  must  be  described  or  discussed  in  terms 
that  implied  He  was  outside  the  system,  and  was  able  to 
get  inside  it  only  by  some  process  of  interference  or  suspension 
of  law. 

Pantheism,  on  the  other  hand,  reversed  this  process  : God 
was  the  causa  immanens,  inside  nature,  not  separable  from 
it,  the  eternal  ground  or  substance  whose  infinite  modes  are 
our  phenomena  of  space  and  time.  Intelligence  was  the 
mode  of  an  infinite  attribute  which  was  termed  thought,  and 
body  the  mode  of  an  attribute  termed  extension.  Deity 
must  have  an  infinite  multitude  of  attributes,  but  these  were 
the  only  two  revealed  in  experience,  and  so  all  we  knew. 
But  this  theory  as  completely  dissolved  God  in  nature  as  the 
other  held  Him  apart  from  it.  He  was  but  the  abstract 
of  our  concrete  experience,  the  hidden  energy  conceived  not 
as  energy  but  as  being,  which  effects  or  suffers  the  cycle 
of  changes  we  call  the  universe.  He  was  not  the  natura 
naturata,  the  begotten  or  produced  nature,  our  phenomenal 
existence,  but  natura  naturans^  the  begetting  or  producing 
nature,  whose  infinite  modes  were  ever  forming  and  ever 
dissolving.  He  alone  was  ; everything  else  was  but  appear- 
ance, the  swiftly  formed  and  dissolved  changes  of  an  infinite 
kaleidoscope. 

2.  But  to  the  ethicized  notion  of  God  these  theories  are 
both  alike  inadequate  and  alien.  The  complete  transcendence 
of  Deity  involves  His  essential  limitation  and  moral  imper- 
fection. To  the  extent  that  He  makes  nature  independent 
of  Himself  He  does  two  things  : (a)  retracts  His  energies 
or  circumscribes  His  essence,  renouncing  by  the  one  His 
omnipotence  and  by  the  other  His  ubiquity  ; and  (/3)  He 
denies  Himself  all  pleasure  in  His  creation  and  all  normal 
intercourse  with  His  creatures,  so  surrendering,  as  it  were,  the 
very  joy  of  being  a God  who  has  created.  The  nature,  too, 


4i6  deity  transcendent,  yet  immanent. 

that  has  no  God  within  it  is  a mechanical  nature  ; it  may 
have  had  a cause,  but  it  has  no  reason,  and  the  conception  of  its 
origin  is  contradicted  by  the  theory  as  to  its  course.  Then 
the  complete  immanence  of  Deity  is  the  negation  of  His  being. 
He  becomes  but  another  term  for  nature ; is,  like  nature, 
without  moral  character  or  freedom  ; can  only  be,  not  do  ; 
has  attributes,  but  no  action  ; modes,  but  no  life.  Deity  so 
construed  has  ceased  to  be  Divine  ; He  is  but  an  objectified 
abstraction,  a personal  name  used  to  denote  an  impersonal 
and  indeterminable  substance.  But  both  Deism  and  Pan- 
theism err  because  they  are  partial  ; they  are  right  in  what 
they  affirm,  wrong  in  what  they  deny.  It  is  as  antitheses  that 
they  are  false  ; but  by  synthesis  they  may  be  combined  or 
dissolved  into  the  truth.  With  Deism  we  say,  God  is  trans- 
cendent ; unless  He  be  He  is  no  God.  Transcendence 
means  that  He  was  before  and  is  above  nature.  It  neither 
sets  limits  to  Him  nor  is  He  contained  within  its  limits,  but 
as  He  is  before  so  He  is  over  all.  With  Pantheism  we  say, 
God  is  immanent ; unless  He  be  nature  has  no  Divine  life  or 
reason,  and  He  no  infinitude  of  being  or  excellence.  Imma- 
nence means  that  He  is  everywhere  in  nature,  and  nature 
has  no  being  save  in  Plim.  It  does  not  affirm.  He  is  not  apart 
from  nature;  it  only  affirms,  Nature  is  not  apart  from  Him. 
He  is  through  all  and  in  all  ; in  Him  all  live  and  move  and 
are.  The  transcendent  God  is  Creator,  the  immanent  God  is 
Providence  ; the  one  is  necessary  to  the  being,  the  other  to  the 
well-being  of  the  world.  Creation  is  no  greater  a miracle  than 
Providence  ; Providence  is  no  more  miraculous  than  creation. 

To  such  an  idea  of  the  relations  between  God  and  His 
universe  the  implications  of  the  old  rationalistic  terminology, 
whether  deistic  or  apologetical,  and  the  positions  of  Pantheism 
in  its  abstract  and  exclusive  forms,  are  alike  abhorrent 
Where  God  is  immanent.  His  action  can  never  be  inter- 
ference ; where  His  presence  is  conceived  as  necessary  to 
the  very  being  of  nature,  “ intervention  ” is  the  last  word 


THE  RELATION  OF  GOD  TO  NATURE.  417 

that  can  be  used  to  describe  it,  for  the  miracle  were  then 
His  withdrawal  from  nature,  not  His  continuance  within 
it.  And  where  God  is  conceived  as  transcendent.  He  can 
never  be  dissolved  into  nature  or  become  synonymous  with 
it.  Distinction  and  difference  are  of  His  essence,  belong  to  the 
ground  or  constitution  of  His  being  as  ethical  ; and  if  they 
are  immanent  in  Him,  they  make  Him  transcendent  as  regards 
nature, — at  once  related  to  it  and  different  from  it  ; akin  to 
all  its  ethical  elements,  but  alien  from  all  its  anti-ethical.  If  we 
believe  in  a living  God,  we  surely  believe  in  a God  who  lives  ; 
but  God  does  not  live  unless  He  is  every  moment  and  in 
every  atom  as  active  and  as  much  present  as  He  was  in  the 
very  hour  and  article  of  creation. 

But  if  God  construed  through  the  Godhead  becomes,  as 
we  may  say,  the  synthesis  of  transcendence  and  immanence, 
it  is  necessary  that  we  discuss  and  determine  more  fully  the 
relations  expressed  by  these  terms.  In  other  words,  we  must 
bring  the  ethicized  Deity  and  His  creation  more  explicitly 
together. 

§ V.— The  Godhead  and  the  External  Relations 

OF  God. 

I.  It  is  evident,  then,  that  our  conception  of  the  relation 
depends  upon  our  conception  of  the  terms  related — ie.,  as 
we  conceive  God,  we  conceive  the  universe  ; and  as  these 
are  conceived,  so  also  are  their  relations.  The  principle 
through  which  we  interpret  the  related  terms  is  this  : — The 
creature  is  a being  who  corresponds  in  quality  and  kind  to 
the  causal  instinct  or  creative  impulse  to  which  he  owes  his 
existence.  God  does  not  love  because  He  created,  but  He 
created  because  He  loved.  It  follows,  therefore,  that  creation 
in  its  most  real  and  radical  sense  is  the  production  of  a being 
capable  of  being  loved,  and  therefore  of  loving ; for  these 
two  are  strict  counterparts  ; a being  incapable  of  loving  is 

2; 


41 8 TO  GOD  PERSONS  REAL  AND  OPJECTIVE, 

incapable  of  being  loved — may  be  an  instrument  to  be  used 
or  a thing  to  be  admired,  but  is  no  person  able  to  satisfy 
affection  by  giving  it. 

This  distinction  between  person  and  instrument  is  funda- 
mental and  characteristic.  The  instrument  can  have  no  being 
apart  from  the  hand  that  made  or  uses  it  ; but  the  person 
is  independent  in  his  very  dependence,  fulfils  the  end  of  his 
creation  by  obeying  the  law  given  in  his  being.  Without  ih^ 
engineer  the  engine  is  a mass  of  dead  material — is  not 
an  engine  ; through  him  it  came  into  being,  and  through 
him  it  continues  to  be,  to  live,  and  do  its  work — so  informed 
by  mind  as  to  seem  a living  thing.  Without  the  artist  the 
work  of  art  could  not  be,  and  it  lives  only  as  seen  and  realized 
by  the  sympathetic  imagination  ; change,  enlarge,  or  lessen 
our  senses,  and  it  is  a work  of  art  no  more.  But  the  person 
is  so  an  end  in  himself  that  once  he  is  he  has  a being  apart 
from  his  Maker.  The  disciple  does  not  die  with  the  master 
who  formed  him  ; he  becomes  independent,  a master  himself, 
his  excellence  as  a teacher  but  expressing  his  excellence  as  a 
learner.  The  home  fulfils  its  functions  only  as  it  makes  not 
instruments  that  cannot  be  without  the  parent,  but  persons 
who  grow  into  the  conscious  manhood  which  is  possessed  of 
the  energies  and  foresight  creative  of  new  times  and  new  homes. 
The  instrument  is  for  use,  but  the  person  for  action  and 
communion  ; what  disqualifies  for  either  or  both  spoils  the 
personality.  The  more  perfect  the  instrument  grows,  the 
more  necessary  to  it  is  the  delicate  hand  or  the  deft  finger  ; 
but  the  more  perfect  the  person  becomes,  the  more  he  is  a 
causal  will  and  a creative  reason,  able  to  form  as  he  was 
formed.  Thus  it  is  the  very  essence  of  the  instrument  to 
have  no  being  apart  from  the  mind  that  produced  or  employs 
it,  but  it  is  no  less  the  essence  of  the  person  to  have  being 
only  as  he  stands  before  the  creative  mind  distinct  and 
individual,  dependently  independent. 

We  may  say,  then,  that  to  God  two  worlds  exist — one 


BUT  NATURE  INSTRUMENTAL. 


419 


instrumental  and  subjective,  the  other  personal  and  objective. 
But  of  these  the  former  is  apparent,  the  latter  alone  is  real. 
What  we  call  matter  or  nature  has  no  real  being  to  God  ; at 
best,  all  the  reality  it  has  is  relative,  such  as  belongs  to  the 
means  which  a mind  made  and  minds  can  use,  but  which  have 
no  being  without  mind.  The  only  universe  that  really  exists 
to  a moral  Deity  is  a moral  universe.  It  alone  can  exercise 
and  satisfy  the  energies  that  gave  it  being,  for  it  alone  is 
capable  of  the  beatitude  that  can  be  willed,  and  the  capa- 
bility of  beatitude  is  one  with  the  capability  of  loving  and 
being  loved.  God  can  love  only  a being  whose  happiness 
He  can  will,  for  love  is  but  the  passion  to  create  happiness 
active  and  exercised,  but  this  means  that  its  object  is  a moral 
person,  with  a reason  and  a will  of  his  own.  The  most  perfect 
of  all  possible  machines  may  awaken  admiration  in  Deity  as 
in  man,  but  for  it  neither  man  nor  Deity  can  feel  anything 
that  can  be  defined  as  love.  God  watches  sparrows  and  cares 
for  oxen,  but  His  love  is  for  men.  In  their  joys  He  is  able 
to  participate,  and  they  in  His  ; and  when  this  participation  is 
mutual  and  absolute  there  is  beatitude,  God  and  man  alike 
blessing  and  blessed. 

2.  But  these  distinctions  involve  a twofold  relation  of  God — 
one  to  nature  as  instrumental  and  subjective,  and  one  to  man 
as  personal  and  objective.  The  being  of  the  instrument  is 
in  and  through  the  minds  that  use  it.  The  maker  must  be 
before  and  above  the  instrument — i.e.^  the  relation  to  it  is 
one  of  transcendence  ; but  he  must  also  be  in  it,  his  mind  or 
a mind  that  understands  his  as  regards  the  use  or  function 
of  this  special  thing,  must  be  present  and  active  in  order  to  its 
being  as  an  instrument — z.e.,  the  relation  is  one  of  immanence, 
So  without  God  above  nature  it  could  not  have  been,  and 
without  God  within  nature  it  could  not  be.  According:  to 
Kant,  man  makes  nature — i.e.,  without  his  architectonic 
reason  it  could  be  no  cosmos,  a system  of  order,  a realm 
where  what  appear  as  individual  and  disconnected  pheno- 


420 


NATURE  THE  MIDDLE  TERM 


mena  are  reduced  to  a co-ordinated  and  intelligible  whole. 
But  if  mind  is  constitutive  of  the  very  nature  it  interprets, 
it  means  that  nature  is  a middle  term  between  minds.  What 
intelligence  finds  in  it  belongs  to  intelligence  as  a discovery 
rather  than  as  a creation,  but  what  intellects  discover  intel- 
lect had  created.  Thus  the  cuneiform  characters  of  Babylonia 
and  the  hieroglyphs  of  Egypt  can  say  nothing  to  the  animal ; 
it  has  no  sense  to  which  they  can  appeal,  and  they  have 
no  meaning  to  any  sense  it  has.  In  a purely  animal  world 
symbols  of  thought  could  have  no  significance,  for  thought 
has  no  being.  But  they  do  exist  to  reason,  and  so  are 
capable  of  interpretation  by  it,  and  it  is  by  virtue  of  this 
capability  of  interpretation  that  they  are  characters  or  signs. 
As  they  are  read,  the  language  they  represent  is  constituted 
or  restored.  But  the  language  could  not  be  reconstituted 
by  the  interpreting  mind  if  it  had  not  been  constituted  a 
language  by  the  mind  interpreted.  The  cries  or  characters  of 
the  insane  are  senseless  to  the  sane,  and  the  language  of  the 
reason  is  unintelligible  to  the  idiot.  The  condition,  then,  of 
a language  being  understood  is,  that  it  embody  understand- 
ing. No  bilingual  or  trilingual  inscription  would  enable 
reason  to  recover  a tongue  that  had  no  thought  or  reason  in 
it.  Hence  the  nature  whose  speech  is  intelligible  to  man 
speaks  of  the  intelligence  of  its  Maker ; its  interpretation  is 
His.  And  therefore,  if  mind  makes  nature,  it  is  because 
mind  created  nature,  constituted  it  a middle  term  between 
two  intelligences.  But  this  is  only  the  metaphysical  way  of 
expressing  the  transcendence  and  the  immanence  alike  of 
God  and  man,  or  of  saying  that  nature  is  an  instrument  to 
man  because  one  of  God.  Every  act  of  interpretation  is  an 
act  of  transcendence,  for  if  man  did  not  so  rise  above  as  to 
co-ordinate  and  combine  or  relate  what  he  reads,  he  could  not 
read  it ; but  it  also  involves  the  fact  of  a twofold  immanence 
— thought  within  the  thing  interpreted,  and  the  interpreted 
thing  within  the  consciousness  of  the  interpreter.  Hence  we 


WHICH  SPEAKS  OF  SPIRIT  TO  SPIRIT. 


421 


may  say  that  nature  as  an  instrument  or  middle  term  has 
no  being  save  as  constituted  by  the  mutual  and  correlative 
indwelling  or  transcendence  and  immanence  of  God  and 
man. 

3.  But  if  nature  be  the  middle  term,  with  a being  that  is 
only  instrumental,  persons  or  spirits  represent  the  beings  that 
are  to  God  real  or  objective.  With  them  He  can  sustain 
relations  that  exercise  all  His  energies,  physical  and  moral, 
emotional  and  intellectual  ; and  what  He  can  do  is  what  He 
will.  They  are  beings  capable  of  good,  capable  of  evil ; 
therefore  fit  subjects  for  the  hourly  care  of  Him  who  made 
them.  And  this  care  is  but  a form  of  His  creative  energy. 
On  the  most  purely  metaphysical  grounds  we  may  say  that  it 
is  not  within  the  power  even  of  the  Omnipotent  to  make  a 
being  independent  of  Himself,  for  that  would  mean  a second 
Omnipotent,  a created  infinite.  But  omnipotence  is  not  the 
synonym  of  God  conceived  as  Godhead.  The  terms  in  which 
He  is  construed  are  ethical,  and  the  ethical  Deity  can  never 
live  out  of  relations,  or  secluded  from  those  who  need  Him. 
He  will  not  dissolve  the  relations  through  which  alone  He 
can  work  the  beatitude  He  has  willed  : were  He  to  do  so.  He 
would  cancel  the  very  end  for  which  He  had  made  the  world. 

If  this  be  so,  then  two  things  follow : (a)  the  creative  will  as 
a will  of  moral  good  is  eternal,  and  (/5)  universal.  These  terms 
but  express  the  same  idea — the  one  under  the  form  of  time  or 
duration,  the  other  under  the  form  of  space  or  extension.  Ac- 
cording to  the  one,  the  good-will  of  God  never  began  to  be,  and 
it  can  never  cease  from  being,  or  be  other  than  it  has  ever  been. 
According  to  the  other.  His  moral  energies  can  never  be  cir- 
cumscribed in  their  action,  any  more  than  they  can  cease  to  act 
or  be  changed  in  their  direction  or  purpose.  God’s  being  is 
timeless,  as  it  is  boundless  : His  ubiquity  does  not  know  the 
distinctions  of  here  and  there,  propinquity  and  distance ; 
there  is  no  place  to  Him  who  cannot  remove  Himself  from 
one  point  to  another,  or  time  to  Him  who  knows  only 


422  IMMUTABILITY  METAPHYSICAL  AND  ETHICAL. 


eternity.  What  can  be  measured  by  years  or  centuries  has 
a beginning  and  will  have  an  end,  but  where  there  is  neither 
end  nor  beginning  there  can  be  no  measurement.  And  so  to 
say  that  God  is  eternal  is  to  say  that  for  Him  the  categories 
of  time  are  not ; He  is  no  older  to-day  than  He  was  on  the 
morn  of  creation,  or  than  He  will  be  when  its  even  has  come. 
And  in  the  region  of  space  it  is  as  impossible  to  restrict  His 
energies  as  to  limit  His  being.  He  is  pure  action  as  well 
as  pure  thought.  Creation  was  for  Him  no  moment  of 
exceptional  activity  within  a defined  area.  Providence  is 
continuous  creation.  To  maintain  a world  which  is  more 
a process  of  becoming  than  a completed  result,  is  as  much 
creation  as  was  its  aboriginal  production.  And  so  we  must 
conceive  God  to  be  just  as  much  and  as  directly  concerned 
in  the  becoming  and  being  of  every  man  as  He  was  in  the 
becoming  and  being  of  the  first.  In  all  time  and  in  all 
place  God  worketh  hitherto. 

But  the  moral  counterpart  of  an-essence  that  knows  no  time 
or  space  is  a character  that  knows  no  change.  Yet  ethical  is 
not  as  metaphysical  immutability.  As  regards  PI  is  meta- 
physical being,  God  is  above  our  categories  of  sequence  and 
position  ; as  regards  His  ethical  being,  He  is  the  home  of 
relation  and  activity.  The  immutability  of  the  former  is,  as 
it  were,  quantitative,  but  of  the  latter  qualitative — i.e.^  in  the 
one  case  there  never  can  be  less  or  more,  but  in  the  other 
there  never  can  be  different  or  opposite.  In  other  words, 
metaphysical  immutability  relates  to  being  and  energies,  but 
ethical  to  character  and  end.  This  distinction  involves  another  : 
the  modes  or  forms  of  activity  which  express  metaphysical 
immutability  are  uniform  or  invariable,  but  those  which  express 
ethical  are  variable  or  multiform — i.e.y  the  physical  attributes 
and  energies  of  God  have  to  do  with  invariable  quantities  and 
relations,  but  the  ethical  have  to  do  with  variable  persons, 
with  their  varying  characters  and  states.  In  the  realm  of 
physical  existence  God  can  never  seem  different  from  what 


GOD  THE  ETERNAL  WILL  OF  GOOD. 


423 


He  is — the  Almighty,  All-present,  in  a word  the  Infinite — 
but  in  the  realm  of  moral  He  often  seems  different,  though 
He  always  is  the  same.  It  depends  on  the  state  and  needs 
and  character  of  the  person  what  He  will  seem,  but  what  He 
is  and  does  depends  only  on  Himself  The  older  theology 
expressed  the  same  idea  when  it  said.  The  chief  end  of  God,  as 
of  man,  is  the  glory  of  God.  The  idea  is  right  if  our  conception 
of  the  Divine  Being  is  right ; but  this  conception  is  primary. 
As  we  conceive  Him,  so  also  must  we  conceive  His  actions 
and  ends.  If  God  be  as  the  Godhead,  a Being  whose  very 
life  is  love,  then  the  only  ends  worthy  of  the  infinitely  Good 
are  those  of  infinite  goodness.  If  He  acts  as  becomes  Himself 
rather  than  as  we  deserve,  then  we  shall  experience  a good 
proportioned  to  His  immeasurable  grace,  not  accommodated 
to  our  own  measurable  merits.  Hence  Jonathan  Edwards 
argued  that  the  chief  end  of  God  could  be  expressed  in  a 
twofold  form — either  as  His  own  glory  or  as  the  good  of  the 
creature.  These  were  not  two  things,  but  only  the  same 
thing  seen  from  different  sides.  Yet  the  glory,  as  the  grander, 
was  the  higher  point  of  view.  For  God  to  act  in  a manner 
that  became  God  was  surely  for  the  action  to  be  more  creative 
of  good  than  if  He  simply  regarded  a universe  which  could 
never  cease  to  be  finite.  Where  all  the  ends  are  infinite,  none 
of  the  acts  can  be  mean  or  limited.  The  Creator’s  primary 
motive  governs  His  permanent  action  and  determines  the 
creation’s  ultimate  end ; and  all  who  live  in  the  universe, 
and  the  universe  in  which  they  live,  will  be  penetrated  with 
as  much  of  good  as  it  is  able  to  bear  or  they  are  willing  to 
receive. 

The  ethicized  conception  of  God,  which  we  owe  to  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  Godhead,  has  thus  resulted  in  an 
ethicized  conception  of  the  universe,  or  of  being  as  related  to 
God.  It  has  thus  lifted  us  to  a higher  position  than  is 
possible  to  a mere  philosophical  Theism.  God  is  not  in 
theology,  as  He  is  in  philosophy,  conceived  under  the 


424 


THE  ETHICIZED  DEITY 


categories  of  metaphysical  immutability,  but  under  those  of 
ethical  ; and  these  are  defined  for  us  by  the  terms  in  which 
the  revelation  came.  It  came  in  the  Son,  through  the  Only 
Begotten  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father.  And  this  means 
that  paternal  love,  filial  love,  love  communicative,  and  love 
dependent,  receptive,  reflective,  are  of  the  essence  of  God — 
He  incapable  of  being  Himself  without  love,  it  capable  of 
describing  if  not  defining  His  very  being.  And  when  we 
attempt  to  translate  these  immanent  ethical  realities  and 
relations  into  their  external  counterpart,  what  can  we  say  but 
that  the  conditions  of  His  inner  life  constitute  the  laws  and 
motives  of  His  outer?  God  cannot  be  other  to  His  universe 
than  He  is  to  Himself.  He  did  not  create  to  hate,  but  to 
love  ; creation  continues  because  He  loves,  not  that  He  may 
hate.  His  affection  is  not  a perishable  emotion,  can  be  as  little 
lost  by  sin  as  gained  by  service.  His  love  of  the  created  is 
something  He  owes  to  Himself,  not  something  that  can  be 
earned  by  merit  or  achieved  by  success.  Were  the  reason  of 
the  love  in  man  rather  than  in  God,  it  would  be  in  ceaseless 
change,  always  mixed,  never  pure  ; but  God  loves  for  His 
own  sake,  not  for  the  creature’s.  Were  He  to  hate  even  the 
devil.  He  would  while  the  feeling  endured  have  in  Him  an 
element  alien  to  the  Divine,  and  so  would  be  less  than  God. 
It  is  granted  to  no  being  to  compel  Deity  to  lose  the  splendid 
happiness  of  loving  even  those  who  disobey  and  hate  Him. 
But  though  the  good  and  the  evil  may  be  alike  loved,  yet  the 
love  is  not  in  the  two  cases  of  the  same  quality.  Quantitatively 
there  is  no  more  of  the  love  of  God  in  heaven  than  in  hell,  but 
qualitatively  the  loves  differ  as  much  as  hell  and  heaven. 
The  love  of  the  good  is  complacency,  but  the  love  of  the  evil 
is  pity  or  compassion.  Complacency  is  twice  blessed,  gives 
the  mutual  joy  that  is  beatitude,  happy  1 eing  in  a happy 
world ; but  compassion  feels  double  pain — pain  for  him  who 
needs  help,  and  pain  for  the  evil  that  causes  the  help  to  be 
needed.  Complacency  is  the  double  beatitude  of  God  in  the 


AND  THE  ETHICIZED  UNIVERSE. 


425 


universe  and  of  the  universe  in  God.  Pity,  too,  is  double  ; it  is 
the  shadow  which  evil  casts  on  the  Good,  and  the  promise  the 
Good  is  ever  bound  to  make  to  Himself — never  to  surrender  to 
evil  those  who  are  held  by  evil.  But  this  promise, carries  us 
beyond  natural  into  the  region  of  positive  or  constructive 
Theology. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  GODHEAD  AND  THE  DEITY  OF  CONSTRUCTIVE 

THEOLOGY, 

§ L— The  Theistic  Conception  and  Theology. 
HIS  discussion  started  from  the  distinction  between  God 


and  the  Godhead.^  The  Godhead  is  Deity  as  He  is 
in  and  for  Himself,  the  infinite  Manifold  who  is  by  His 
very  nature,  as  it  were,  a society,  the  home  of  ethical  relations 
and  activities,  of  spiritual  life  and  love  ; but  God  is  Deity  as 
He  is  to  and  for  the  universe,  in  His  outward  functions  and 
relations,  a unity  over  against  the  manifold  of  finite  existence. 
The  distinctions  do  not  break  up  the  unity,  for  they  are  im- 
manent ; nor  does  the  unity  abolish  the  distinctions,  for  God 
does  not  cease  to  be  one  because  His  nature  is  a rich  and 
complex  manifold  rather  than  an  absolute  and  abstract  sim- 
plicity. In  other  words,  God  is  not  a substance  or  unit  or 
monad  incapable  of  thought  or  action  ; but  an  infinite  Being, 
with  all  the  conditions  of  free,  personal,  ethical,  and  conscious 
existence  within  Himself  The  significance  of  this  notion  for 
the  questions  raised  by  a speculative  or  philosophical  Theism 
we  have  seen  ; what  we  have  now  to  see  is  its  significance 
for  the  primary  or  material  conception  of  a positive  or  con- 
structive theology. 

God  is  here  a quantitative  but  Godhead  a qualitative  term. 
According  to  the  one.  He  is  an  indissoluble  unity  ; according 
to  the  other.  He  is,  to  use  in  a new  connotation  Butler’s  term, 


* Supra,  p.  385* 


god’s  perfection  is  god’s  law. 


427 


an  indiscerptible  community — He  is  by  His  very  essence 
social,  possessed  of  a life  which  can  be  common  or  communal 
only  as  there  are  personal  distinctions.  But  between  God 
and  Godhead  there  must  be  an  absolute  and  reciprocal  com- 
'inunicatio  idioniatum.  God  is  capable  of  receiving  the  whole 
Godhead,  and  the  Godhead  of  absorbing  all  the  attributes  and 
exercising  all  the  functions  of  God.  By  God  the  Godhead 
is  unified ; but  the  Godhead  is,  as  regards  its  essential  qualities 
and  life,  personalized  in  God  for  the  government  of  the 
universe.  Without  this  complete  interpenetration  of  the  two 
ideas  our  constructive  thought  would  be  without  its  regulative 
principle. 

We  may  say,  then,  that  as  the  Godhead  is  God  inter- 
preted in  the  terms  of  the  Spirit  and  consciousness  of 
Christ,  so  the  special  task  of  Christian  theology  is  to  re- 
interpret God  in  the  terms  of  the  Godhead.  What  He  does 
depends  upon  what  He  is — i.e.,  all  His  functions  and  actions 
relative  to  the  created  are  only  the  outward  expression  of  His 
inner  qualities  and  character.  As  Hooker  has  well  said, 
putting  into  English  the  fundamental  principle  of  the  Reformed 
theology  of  his  day,  “ The  being  of  God  is  a kind  of  law  to 
His  working  ; for  that  perfection  which  God  is  giveth  per- 
fection to  that  He  doth.”^  And  the  attempt  to  approach  the 
doctrine  of  God  through  the  Godhead  means  simply  that  what 
we  wish  to  know  is  “ that  perfection  which  God  is,”  in  order 
that  we  may  the  better  understand  the  “law  of  His  working” 
and  the  perfection  of  His  works. 

What  is  fundamental,  then,  is  this : the  conception  of  God 
in  positive  or  constructive  theology  is  not  as  in  natural 
or  speculative  ; it  has  been  transformed  by  the  action  of 
the  supreme  and  normative  religious  consciousness.  This 
theology  does  not  start  from  a philosophical  idea,  but  from 
a concrete  Person  and  the  Deity  as  known  to  Him  : in  other 


“ Eccles.  Pol./’  I.  i,  2, 


428  INTERPENETRATION  OF  GODHEAD  AND  GOD. 

words,  we  come  to  the  Godhead  through  Christ,  and  to  God 
through  the  Godhead  ; and  through  the  God  so  reached  we 
interpret  our  beliefs  and  organize  them  into  a theology. 
Hence  the  explication  of  this  constitutive  idea  forms  at  once 
the  foundation  and  ground-plan  of  the  whole  theological 
system. 

But  in  dogmatic  theology  there  has  been,  from  causes 
already  indicated,^  a remarkable  tendency,  if  not  to  keep  the 
doctrines  of  the  Godhead  and  God  apart,  yet  to  leave  them 
in  a state  of  incomplete  interpenetration.  The  Godhead  has 
had  greater  ecclesiastical  than  theological  or  cosmical  signi- 
ficance ; while  in  soteriology  it  has  been  accepted  more  as  the 
means  or  condition  of  effecting  salvation  than  as  the  very  truth 
as  to  God  and  His  relations  to  man.  The  idea  of  God,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  been  so  construed  as  to  determine  the  nature, 
necessity,  and  limits  of  the  salvation  which  the  Persons  of  the 
Godhead  have  been  made  to  effect.  When  we  think  of  the 
Godhead  we  speak  of  the  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit ; when  we 
think  of  God  we  speak  of  the  Sovereign,  Lawgiver,  and  Judge. 
And  under  this  distinction  of  speech  there  has  lived  a dis- 
tinction of  ideas.  While  our  notion  of  the  Godhead  has  been 
formally  Christian,  our  notion  of  God  has  been  formally 
Hebrew,  but  materially  Roman — the  conception  of  God 
is  Jewish  in  its  origin,  but  into  it  has  been  read,  upon  it  has 
been  impressed,  the  spirit,  the  character,  and  the  categories  of 
Roman  law  and  laws  Rome  has  modified  or  influenced.  And 
this  forensic  Deity,  instead  of  being  permeated  and  transformed 
by  the  ethical  qualities  of  the  Godhead,  has  imposed,  as  it 
were,  its  yoke  upon  the  Divine  Persons,  forcing  them  to  serve 
as  names  or  factors  in  a juridical  process.  In  other  words,  the 
Hebrseo-Roman  God  has  so  prevailed  over  the  Christian  God- 
head, that  instead  of  the  latter  expelling  the  juristic  or  forensic 
element  from  the  notion  of  the  former,  the  Godhead  has 


* Supra,  pp.  388-91. 


THE  CATHOLIC  CONCEPTION  OF  DEITY. 


429 


tended  to  become  mainly  significant  as  a convenient  mode 
of  carrying  out  a legal  process  which  the  legalized  notion  of 
God  had  made  necessary.  What  is  needed  is  to  reverse  this 
process,  and  penetrate  our  conception  of  God  with  the  life 
and  qualities  of  the  Godhead. 

§ II.— The  Juridical  Deity. 

The  juridical  conception  of  Deity  has  two  main  forms,  corre- 
sponding to  the  two  main  types  of  theology — the  institutional 
or  political,  and  the  dialectic  or  constructive.  These  two 
forms  have  as  their  principal  representatives  Catholicism  and 
Calvinism.  The  forces  that  organized  the  Catholic  system 
elaborated  the  Catholic  conception  of  God.  The  law  it 
incorporated  He  was  made  to  embody ; His  character  and 
functions  were  adjusted  to  the  legislative  and  administrative 
system  which  came  to  be  known  as  the  Church.  The  plastic 
ideas  worked  inward,  from  the  circumference  to  the  centre, 
rather  than  outwards,  from  the  centre  to  the  circumference. 
The  notions  of  the  old  law  were  read  into  Deity  rather  than 
the  notion  of  Deity  articulated  into  a new  law.  The  peni- 
tential discipline  of  the  Church  organized  the  idea  that  law 
could  be  commutative  as  well  as  vindicative,  that  it  could 
be  so  satisfied  by  the  loss  or  suffering  of  the  disobedient  as 
to  remit  the  severer  and  more  flagrant  penalty ; and  in  the 
image  of  the  law  God  was  made.  The  heavenly  and  the 
earthly  hierarchies  corresponded,  just  as  the  pseudo-Dionysius 
had  conceived,  only  the  correspondence  was  not  as  he  con- 
ceived it ; it  was  the  earthly  that  gave  its  form  and  quality 
to  the  heavenly.  In  other  words,  the  political  character  and 
expediencies  of  the  Church  were  so  reflected  in  its  Deity  that 
He  was  but,  as  it  were,  their  ideal  embodiment  ; and  the  more 
magisterial  its  spirit  and  methods  became  the  more  of  a 
magistrate  He  grew.  The  Papacy  is  a delegated  magistracy, 
but  the  delegates  have  made  the  visible  authority  become  a 


430 


THE  CALVINISTIC  DEITY 


law  for  the  Invisible.  To  the  Catholic  mind  religion  is,  alike 
as  regards  faith  and  conduct,  a matter  of  positive  or  insti- 
tuted law.  The  Deity  is  as  the  system  is  ; the  system  is  one 
of  ceremonial  and  sacerdotal  legalism,  and  the  Deity  is  a Being 
who  can  be  satisfied  by  a sacerdotal  act  or  process  for  any 
failure  in  legality,  whether  termed  disobedience  or  sin. 

The  Calvinistic  conception  of  God  was  reached  by  a process 
exactly  the  reverse  of  the  Catholic — viz.,  the  dialectical  or 
deductive.  He  was  in  the  ultimate  analysis  the  supreme  or 
sovereign  Will  ; His  highest  function  was  the  realization  of 
Himself  and  His  ends,  and  this  was  possible  only  as  He 
ordained  and  created  the  necessary  means.  In  a deductive 
system  the  essential  thing  is  the  premiss  ; if  it  be  false  or 
inadequate,  the  conclusion  can  never  be  right.  And  a theology 
which  professes  to  start  with  the  God  given  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  Christ,  can  never  be  justified  in  the  attempt  to  reduce 
God  to  the  category  of  will.  And  the  evil  in  the  initial 
assumption  was  intensified  by  the  efforts  at  mitigation  being 
made,  as  it  were,  from  without — by  setting  limits  to  God 
rather  than  by  a change  in  the  conception  of  Him.  As  to  the 
ultimacy  of  the  will  Calvin  is  explicit  : men  are  admonished 
“ nihil  causae  quaerere  extra  voluntatem.”  ^ Is  He  not  unjust, 
then,  when  He  elects  some  and  reprobates  others  ? No  ; for, 
as  Augustine  taught,  those  He  elects  merit  no  favour,  while 
those  He  reprobates  deserve  punishment ; and  so  He  is  “ ab 
Omni  accusatione  liberari,  similitudine  creditoris,  cuius  potestate 
est  alteri  remittere,  ab  altero  exigere.”  ^ The  very  use  of  such 
a figure  ought  to  have  made  the  falsity  of  the  idea  apparent. 
Calvin  holds,  indeed,  that  the  Divine  will  is  not,  as  it  were, 
mere  naked  omnipotence,  for  God  “ sibi  ipsi  lex  est”^;  but 
this  law  is  more  judicial  and  retributive  than  gracious  and 
salutary.  And  under  the  influences  of  controversy  it  tended 
more  and  more  to  become  detached  from  the  Divine  nature  or 

^ “Inst.,”  iii.  22,  II.  * Ibid.,  iii.  23,  il. 

* Ibid.,  iii.  23,  2. 


IS  THE  ABSOLUTE  SOVEREIGN. 


431 


character  and  attached  to  the  Divine  function  or  office.  In 
other  words,  God  was  interpreted  through  sovereignty  rather 
than  sovereignty  through  God.  The  notion  of  sovereignty 
was  not  always  one  or  uniform.  The  Calvinist  held  it  to  be 
avevdvvla,  absolute  and  irresponsible  ; but  the  Arminian  held  it 
to  be  tempered  by  benevolence  : to  the  one  it  was  a “ domi- 
nium absolutum,”  ^ to  the  other  a dominium  “ partim  dignitati 
naturae  divinae,  partim  conditioni  naturali  hominis  com- 
mensuratum.”  ^ And  it  was  characteristic  that  men  laid 
down  propositions  about  the  Absolute  Sovereign  they  would 
have  hesitated  to  affirm  as  to  God.  They  claimed  for  Him 
rights  such  as  were  then  claimed  for  kings,  but  were  unworthy 
of  Deity,  and  defined  His  relations  to  man  and  man  s to  Him 
in  language  more  agreeable  to  the  politics  of  despotism  than 
the  truth  and  grace  of  religion.  For  the  more  the  emphasis 
changed  from  will  to  law,  from  personal  power  to  impersonal 
government,  the  more  could  they  speak  of  Him  in  the 
language  of  the  current  jurisprudence,  and  hedge  Him  within 
its  hard  and  narrow  rules.  What  Deism  did  in  the  physical 
realm  forensic  theology  did  in  the  moral  and  religious.  God 
was  sacrificed  to  sovereignty,  imprisoned  within  the  laws  He 

^ Camero,  Opera,  p.  41.  But  especially  treatise  by  Amyraut,  “ De 
jure  Dei  in  creaturas,”  in  “ Dissertationes  Theologicae.”  It  is  characteristic 
that  the  more  moderate  school  of  Calvinism  was  the  most  emphatic  in  its 
doctrine  of  sovereignty;  they  tried  to  relieve  the  pressure  of  their  system 
on  the  character  of  God  by  substituting  for  Him  and  His  will  theories 
forensic  and  judicial. 

2 Episcopius,  “ Instit.  Theol.,”  iv.,  sec.  ii.,  c.  28.  In  this  chapter  Epis- 
copius  directly  sets  limits  from  the  side  of  equity  and  nature  to  the 
power  of  God  (cf.  supra^  pp.  169-72).  He  argued,  on  the  one  hand, 
“justitia  haec  est  voluntatis  actionumque  divinorum  directrix”;  and,  on 
the  other,  that  it  followed  from  the  natural  congruency  and  connection 
which  man  has  with  God  “ ut  jus  ac  dominium  Dei  in  hominem  non  sit 
infinitum.”  Cf.  Ritschl,  “ Geschich.  Studien  zur  Christ.  Lehre  von  Gott,” 
“ Jahrb.  fiir  Deuts.  Theol.,”  vol.  xiii,,  pp.  67-133.  Theories  of  the  Divine 
sovereignty  had  the  strictest  relation  to  current  theories  as  to  the  forms  of 
government,  or  the  duties  and  rights  of  citizens,  and  the  grounds  and  limits 
of  the  regal  power.  This  means  that  to  the  forensic  theologian,  as  was  the 
state,  such  was  the  universe  and  the  reign  of  God. 


432 


god’s  primary  relation  to  man 


was  supposed  to  have  framed,  or  reduced  to  the  function  of 
their  administrator.  In  the  older  Calvinism  there  was  a 
majesty  as  of  the  Infinite  ; in  the  later  there  was  a hard  and 
pragmatic  spirit  as  of  the  lawyer  and  the  law  court. 

§ III. — Whether  and  in  what  Sense  God  is  a 
Sovereign. 

In  our  modern  theology  much  of  the  old  forensic  speech 
and  idea  still  survives  ; and  so  it  may  be  as  well  to  examine 
its  basis  In  the  doctrine  of  the  sovereignty.  The  last  serious 
attempt  to  state  and  defend  it  was  made  by  the  late  Dr. 
Candlish.  His  position  consisted  of  three  main  parts  : — 

1.  “God’s  fundamental  and  primary”  relation  to  man  was 
that  of  Creator  and  Governor ; “ His  rule  or  government 
must  be,  in  the  proper  forensic  sense,  legal  and  judicial  ” ; 
“ absolute  and  sovereign  ” ; “ of  the  most  thoroughly  royal, 
imperial,  autocratic  kind.”  To  conceive  it  as  anything  else 
were  “an  inconsistency,  an  intolerable  anomaly,  a suicidal 
self-contradiction.”  ^ 

2.  The  only  essential  Sonship  was  that  of  Christ’s  Deity, 
but  by  its  union  with  His  Deity  His  humanity  became 
participant  in  the  filial  relation.  And  so  He  was  the  only 
historical  Person  who  was  really  and  by  nature  the  Son  of 
God. 

3.  The  only  other  sons  of  God  were  the  elect  in  Christ, 
who  became  by  adoption  partakers  in  the  Sonship  of  the 
Only  Begotten.  Beyond  these  limits  there  was  no  Father- 
hood, only  sovereignty. 

The  first  position  is  the  fundamental  ; and  with  it  alone  are 
we  meanwhile  concerned.  Let  us,  then,  ask  What  a “ strictly 
legal  and  judicial  sovereignty,”  “ of  the  most  royal,  imperial, 
and  autocratic  kind,”  means,  and  How  far  it  is  predicable  of 
God?  These  are  terms  borrowed  from  our  political  history 
and  experience,  and  must  by  these  be  interpreted  before  they 
1 “The  Fatherhood  of  God,”  pp.  9,  10,  12,  13.  17  (5th  ed.). 


VARIOUS  KINDS  OF  SOVEREIGNTY. 


433 


can  be  allowed  to  pass  current  in  theology.  Well,  then,  the 
legal  sovereign  may  be  either  (a)  a sovereign  made  by  law,  with 
all  his  rights  and  functions  defined,  guarded,  and  maintained 
by  the  law  that  made  him  ; or  (/3)  a sovereign  who  makes  the 
law,  with  all  his  rights  and  authority  rooted  in  power,  in  the 
force  which  makes  the  stronger  the  king  of  all  feebler  men. 
The  sovereigns  of  the  first  kind  are  constitutional,  “ strictly 
legal  and  judicial  ” ; the  sovereigns  of  the  second  kind  are 
despotic,  “ imperial  and  autocratic.”  As  we  have  the  one  or 
other,  we  have  a different  ideal  of  law  and  justice,  of  their 
relation  to  the  sovereign  and  of  his  relation  to  them,  of  the 
source,  limits,  and  quality  of  his  power,  royal  and  judicial. 
The  constitutional  sovereign  is  a creation  of  law,  made  by 
it  for  its  own  ends,  an  instrument  of  the  order  it  aims  at 
securing  ; bound,  therefore,  by  its  terms  ; going  beyond  them  at 
his  peril ; faced  ever  by  the  possible  penalty  of  being  unmade 
by  his  very  maker.  This  means  that  the  legal  sovereign  is 
the  supreme  subject,  able  to  commit  treason  against  the  im- 
personal majesty  of  the  creative  law,  just  as  the  citizen  may 
commit  treason  against  the  personal  majesty  of  the  reigning 
monarch.  But  this  sovereignty  is  a creation  of  highly  civilized 
times ; designed  not  to  abolish  but  to  secure  the  equality  of 
all  before  the  law,  so  much  so  that  he  who  most  seems  over  it 
is  most  bound  to  live  under  it  if  he  would  live  at  all.  But  the 
“ imperial  or  autocratic  ” sovereign  is  the  creator  of  law.  He 
is  its  only  source  ; it  is  but  his  expressed  will.  He  has  only  to 
change  his  will,  and  the  law  is  changed.  His  authority  is  not 
based  on  law,  but  law  is  based  on  his  authority.  He  is  the 
ground  and  condition  rather  than  the  instrument  of  order. 

But  this  “ imperial  or  autocratic  ” species  of  sovereignty 
may  be  of  two  kinds — either  acquired  or  natural.  Acquired 
power  is  power  gained  by  some  means — conquest  or  cunning, 
force  or  fraud,  which  is  only  a kind  of  force,  viz.,  the  ability 
to  deceive  by  seeming  to  be  other  than  the  reality.  The 
ultimate  basis  of  authority  so  acquired  is  superior  strength  ; 

28 


434 


THE  FATHER  TS  THE  SOVEREIGN, 


and  though  it  may  be  transmitted,  it  can  never  lose  the 
character  it  owes  to  its  source.  But  while  the  authority 
based  on  force  may  be  used  for  moral  ends,  it  is  not  moral 
authority ; while  it  may  be  “ royal,  imperial,  autocratic,” 
yet  it  is  not  in  the  strict  sense  either  a moral  or  religious 
government.  Indeed,  the  imperial  sovereign  is  simply  the 
imperator  become  the  rex^  the  head  of  the  army  changed  by 
virtue  of  the  force  behind  and  beneath  him  into  the  head  of 
the  state.  But  the  natural  sovereignty  is  of  a different  order  ; 
its  representative  or  type  is  the  parent  or  the  patriarch.  The 
primitive  or  aboriginal  natural  sovereign  was  the  primitive 
father.  The  first  kingdom  was  the  first  family,  and  its  natural 
head  was  the  first  king.  That  was  the  sort  of  kinghood  that 
rested  on  creatorship  ; but  even  so  it  means  that  fatherhood 
is  the  source  and  basis  of  sovereignty.  The  only  absolute 
natural  kingship,  therefore,  is  neither  legal,  a creation  of  law  ; 
nor  imperial,  a creation  of  power,  personal  or  organized  ; 
but  paternal,  a creation  of  nature.  Unless  we  deify  force,  or 
leave  force  to  create  our  deities,  we  must  find  in  the  father 
the  ideal  of  the  king  absolute  by  valid  or  natural  right. 

So  far,  then,  this  analysis  has  not  resulted  in  the  discovery 
of  any  “ suicidal  contradiction  ” between  the  ideas  of  sovereignty 
and  fatherhood  ; on  the  contrary,  in  the  family,  which  is  the 
unit  of  society  and  the  germ  of  the  state,  the  terms  become, 
if  not  equivalent,  yet  complementary  and  coextensive.  The 
absence  of  either  element  involves  the  imperfection  of  the 
other,  and  imperils  the  common  good.  The  more  perfect  a 
father  is,  the  more  of  a sovereign  will  he  be  ; the  better  he  is 
as  a sovereign,  the  more  excellently  will  he  fulfil  his  functions 
as  a father.  The  forms  and  sanctions  of  his  authority  will 
vary,  but  the  less  formal  it  grows  the  more  real  it  will  become. 
There  is  nothing  so  absolute  as  the  paternal  reign  in  its 
earliest  form.  The  infant  is  the  most  helpless  creature  in 
nature ; depends  for  food,  clothing,  tendance,  everything 
essential  to  its  continued  being,  on  other  hands  than  its  own  ; 


AND  HIS  SOVEREIGNTY  DOES  NOT  CEASE. 


435 


and  the  parent’s  sovereignty  is  then  a sovereignty  of  care- 
fulness, a mindfulness  which  feels  every  moment  that  the 
child  can  live  only  in  and  through  those  to  whom  it  owes  its 
being.  Here  the  law  governs  the  parent,  though  the  law 
be  love  ; and  in  obedience  to  it  the  work,  as  it  were,  of 
creating  a subject  still  proceeds,  and  only  as  it  is  well  and 
thoughtfully  done  can  the  subject  ever  be  created.  But  in 
due  course  the  new  mind  and  will  awake,  and  sovereignty 
then  assumes  a new  form,  becomes  legislative  and  adminis- 
trative, frames  laws  which  the  child  must  be  now  persuaded, 
now  compelled,  now  beguiled  to  obey.  Here  the  authority  is 
autocratic,  yet  with  an  autocracy  which  is  most  tender  where 
most  imperious.  But  the  child  becomes  a youth,  and  the 
sovereignty  again  changes  its  form,  becomes  flexible  in  means 
that  it  may  be  inflexible  in  end,  loving  the  boy  too  well  to 
tolerate  his  evil,  so  watching  him  that  he  may  by  a now 
regretted  severity  and  a now  gracious  gentleness  be  trained 
and  disciplined  to  good.  And  when  the  youth  becomes  a 
man,  the  sovereignty  does  not  cease,  though  its  form  is 
altogether  unlike  anything  that  had  been  before  ; it  may  be 
the  fellowship  by  which  the  old  enrich  and  ripen  the  young 
and  the  young  freshen  and  enlarge  the  old  ; it  may  be  by  a 
name  which  filial  reverence  will  not  sully,  or  a love  and  a 
pride  which  filial  affection  will  delight  to  gratify  ; or  it  may 
only  be  by  a memory  which,  as  the  years  lengthen,  grows  in 
beauty  and  in  power.  But  in  whatever  form,  the  sovereignty 
of  a father  who  has  been  a father  indeed,  is  of  all  human 
authorities  the  most  real  and  the  most  enduring. 

The  two  ideas  therefore  of  paternity  and  sovereignty 
are  not  only  compatible,  they  are  indissoluble;  either  can 
be  perfect  only  in  and  through  the  other.  The  absolute 
sovereign  without  the  father  is  a tyrant,  a despot,  the 
symbol  of  the  government  that  can  least  of  all  be  suffered 
by  free-born  men  ; the  father  without  the  sovereign  is  a 
weakling,  a puppet  or  thing  made  rather  than  a maker,  the 


436  DISTINCTION  OF  THE  LEGAL  SOVEREIGN, 

symbol  of  the  feeble  good-nature  which  is  so  prolific  a source 
of  evil  even  in  the  good.  Neither  function,  then,  can  be  well 
discharged  without  the  other.  A sovereignty  without  father- 
hood may  create  order,  but  it  is  the  forced  order  which  is 
only  disguised  chaos ; not  the  order  of  concordant  and 
obedient  spirits,  but  of  the  coerced  wills  that  are  most 
rebellious  when  they  have  to  appear  most  submissive.  A 
fatherhood  without  sovereignty  may  beget  persons,  but  can 
never  form  characters,  or  build  the  characters  formed  into  a 
happy  family  or  a contented  and  ordered  state.  The  two. 
Fatherhood  and  Sovereignty,  must  then  live  together,  and 
be  incorporated  into  a living  and  effective  unity,  if  we  are 
to  have  a government  of  ideal  perfection,  such  as  becomes 
God  and  is  suitable  to  a universe  full  of  the  realities  and 
infinite  possibilities  of  good  and  evil. 

§ IV. — The  Sovereignty  of  Law  and  of  God. 

There  is,  then,  no  absolute  antithesis  between  sovereignty 
and  paternity ; the  only  perfect  form  in  which  we  can  have 
either  is  where  we  have  both.  The  argument  which  opposes 
the  two  proceeds  from  the  basis,  not  of  nature  or  ideal  truth, 
but  of  the  policies  and  expediencies  and  experiments  of  our 
perplexed  social  and  civil  life.  On  this  ground  it  is  im- 
possible to  reach  any  clear  or  coherent  conception  of  God’s 
rule  over  men.  For  if  we  describe  His  sovereignty  as,  “ in 
the  proper  forensic  sense,  legal  and  judicial,”  “thoroughly 
royal,  imperial,  autocratic,”  we  simply  interpret  God  in  the 
terms  of  the  government  under  which  we  live,  or  whose  form  we 
chance  to  think  best.  And  this,  so  far  from  making  His  action, 
as  the  Christian  revelation  represents  it,  more  intelligible,  really 
makes  it  quite  inconceivable.  For  sovereignty  is  a radically 
different  thing  when  paternal  and  when  legal  or  imperial ; 
sovereign,  subjects,  laws,  methods  and  ends  of  government, 
are  all,  as  regards  quality  and  kind,  unlike  and  dissimilar. 


AND  THE  PATERNAL  OR  NATURAL. 


437 


Thus  the  purely  legal  or  imperial  sovereign  so  reigns  as  to 
strengthen  and  extend  his  authority,  but  the  father  so  rules 
as  to  educate  and  benefit  his  child,  as  to  order  and  bless  his 
home.  The  relations  of  the  sovereign  are  all  legal ; persons 
to  him  are  nothing  save  subjects  of  rights  or  duties,  objects 
to  be  protected  or  restrained  ; law  and  order  are  all  in 
all ; all  his  ends  are  political,  his  methods  judicial,  his  instru- 
ments most  perfect  where  least  personal  ; his  justice  is  never 
absolute,  always  relative,  tempered  by  the  expediency  which 
can  seldom  dare  to  be  abstractly  just.  But  the  relations 
of  the  father  are  all  personal ; his  ends  are  to  make  good 
persons  ; his  means  must  be  adapted  to  his  ends ; and  his 
reign  is  prosperous  only  as  he  constrains  towards  the  affec- 
tion that  compels  obedience  or  wins  from  evil  by  the  wisdom 
of  a watchful  love. 

And  as  the  sovereigns  differ,  so  do  their  laws.  The  legal 
authority  does  not  chastise,  only  punishes ; all  its  sanctions 
are  penalties,  and  they  are  enforced,  not  to  reform  or 
restore  the  criminal,  but  to  compel  respect  and  conformijty 
to  law.  But  the  paternal  authority  does  not  so  much 
punish  as  chastise  ; all  its  sanctions  are  chastisements,  and 
their  ultimate  aim  is  to  correct  and  reform,  so  expelling 
the  evil  as  to  make  room  for  the  good.  This  distinction  is 
fundamental  and  determinative.  Punishment  and  chastise- 
ment agree  while  they  differ.  They  agree  in  this : — both  are 
exercised  on  offenders  by  those  who  have  the  authority  to 
command  and  the  right  to  be  obeyed,  and  the  power  to 
execute  the  judgment  which  has  been  passed  on  disobedience. 
But  they  differ  here  : — punishment  regards  what  may  be 
variously  described  as  the  maintenance  of  order,  the  public 
good,  the  majesty  of  the  law,  or  the  claims  of  justice ; but 
chastisement  seeks  the  good  of  the  offender,  certain  that  if 
it  secures  this  all  these  other  things  will  surely  follow.  And 
this  distinction  involves  another  : — under  a rigorously  forensic 
or  legal  and  judicial  system  all  penalties  punish,  but  do  not 


438  SOVEREIGNTY  INTERPRETED  THROUGH  GOD, 

chastise  ; they  may  be  vindicative,  exhibiting  the  power  or 
sufficiency  of  the  law  against  those  who  break  it,  or  exem- 
plary and  deterrent,  warning  those  who  would  do  'as  the 
criminal  has  done  of  what  will  be  their  certain  fate : but 
under  a sovereign  paternity  all  penalties  chastise,  and  do  not 
simply  punish — i.e.,  while  doing  the  same  things  that  legal 
punishments  do,  they  yet  aim  at  doing  something  more, 
so  affecting  and  so  placing  the  offender  that  he  shall  cease 
from  his  offences  and  become  dutiful  and  obedient.  Hence 
emerges  a further  and  final  distinction  : — a government  which 
is  “in  the  proper  forensic  sense,  legal  and  judicial,”  is  punitive, 
not  remedial ; its  agencies  and  aims  are  retributory  and  penal, 
not  reformatory  and  restorative  : but  a paternal  sovereignty 
is  in  the  true  sense  remedial  in  its  very  penalties ; its  methods 
and  ends  are  never  merely  vindicative  or  retaliatory,  but  are 
always  corrective,  redemptive.  Under  a purely  legal  govern- 
ment the  salvation  of  the  criminal  is  impossible,  but  under  a 
regal  fatherhood  the  thing  impossible  is  the  total  abandonment 
of  the  sinner.  If  salvation  happens  under  the  former,  it  is 
by  other  means  than  the  forensic  and  the  judicial  ; if  loss  is 
irreparable  under  the  latter,  the  reason  is  not  in  the  father. 
And  so  we  may  say,  in  judgment  the  legal  sovereign  is  just, 
but  the  paternal  is  gracious.  The  one  reigns  that  he  may 
prevent  evil  men  from  injuring  the  good,  but  the  other  reigns 
that  evil  may  cease  by  evil  men  being  saved. 

This  argument  has  not  been  directed  against  the  Sovereignty 
of  God,  but  against  the  attempt  to  bring  it  into  the  category 
of  legal,  judicial,  royal,  or  forensic  governments.  These 
terms  denote  ideas  of  the  most  relative  and  variable  order, 
and  their  use  tends  to  beget  the  notion  that  the  universe  is  a 
transfigured  court  or  a magnified  forum.  There  is  no  inten- 
tion of  denying  God  s absolute  Sovereignty  ; on  the  contrary, 
it  is  here  affirmed  in  the  most  earnest  and  emphatic  way ; but 
what  is  maintained  is,  that  it  must  be  interpreted  through 
God,  and  not  through  our  autocracies  and  monarchies.  It  is 


BUT  NOT  GOD  THROUGH  SOVEREIGNTY. 


439 


God’s  Sovereignty,  and  God  must  be  known  that  the  Sove- 
reignty may  be  understood.  What  was  before  affirmed  as  to 
theism  must  now  be  affirmed  as  to  theology — the  Godhead 
has  completely  ethicized  the  conception  of  God.  And  this 
was  as  great  a necessity  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  The 
Deity  of  our  forensic  theologies  is  legal,  but  not  moral ; by  their 
systems  of  jurisprudence  they  have  made  actions  which  were 
morally  necessary  seem  legally  impossible  to  Him.  Hence 
He  must  be  emancipated  from  legalism  that  He  may  be 
restored  to  moral  reality  and  truth.  But  this  means  that  His 
essential  qualities  are  ethical  rather  than  physical,  metaphysical 
or  political.  These  indeed  are  necessary  to  Deity  as  Creator, 
but  as  servants  to  obey,  not  as  masters  to  command.  The 
moral  attributes  are,  as  it  were,  the  God  of  God,  move  Him 
to  act  and  regulate  His  action.  As  such  they  are  the  seat 
of  the  causal  impulse,  while  the  physical  attributes  are  but 
the  instruments  they  impel  and  guide.  The  world  owes  its 
existence,  not  to  the  omnipotence  of  Deity,  though  without 
His  omnipotence  it  could  not  have  been,  but  to  the  moral 
nature  that  moved  and  the  intellectual  that  used  the  omnipo- 
tence. And  as  creation  was  a moral  act  all  its  motives  and 
ends  were  in  God,  for  only  so  could  they  be  worthy  of  Him. 
These  motives  and  ends  were  those  of  the  supreme  good.  God 
willed  being  that  He  might  will  beatitude.  The  willing  was  a 
sovereign  act,  but  the  motives  and  ends  made  the  act  paternal. 
It  was  both  at  once,  and  was  perfect  because  it  was  both.  In 
other  words,  the  supreme  act  of  Sovereignty  was  the  realiza- 
tion of  Paternity,  for  these  names  only  denote  the  obverse 
and  reverse  sides  of  the  same  thing.  In  origin  they  are 
simultaneous,  in  being  coincident,  in  range  coextensive,  in 
ends  identical.  The  Father  is  never  without  the  Sovereign, 
nor  the  Sovereign  without  the  Father  ; conflict  or  inconsistency 
in  their  acts  is  impossible,  for  they  have  one  will,  and  what  is 
done  by  either  is  performed  by  both.  There  could  be  no 
Sovereignty  without  subjects  or  Fatherhood  without  sons,  and 


440 


GOD  IS  AS  IS  THE  GODHEAD. 


the  act  that  begat  the  sons  created  the  subjects.  But  while 
Sovereignty  may  be  said  to  begin  with  creation,  the  sovereign 
will  does  not,  nor  the  nature  which  guides  the  will — is  its 
law  and  determines  its  end.  Hence,  we  repeat,  we  must  not 
construe  God  through  our  forensic  sovereignty,  but  the  sove- 
reignty through  God,  and  God  through  the  filial  and  normative 
consciousness  of  Jesus  Christ 

Here,  then,  we  emphasize  once  more  the  significance  of  the 
Godhead  for  the  conception  of  God.  God  is  to  Jesus  essentially 
the  Father,  and  He  is  to  Himself  as  essentially  the  Son.  He 
would  not  be  what  He  is  without  the  Fatherhood,  nor  would 
God  be  what  He  is  without  the  Sonship.  Were  the  Sonship 
subtracted,  there  would  be  no  Fatherhood ; were  the  Fatherhood 
denied,  there  could  be  no  Son.  But  the  unity  in  which  these 
relations  are  is  a unity  of  active  and  social  love.  This  defines 
what  God  according  to  His  essence  is  : — Viewed  from  within, 
as  Godhead,  He  is  this  love  in  eternal  exercise,  existing 
through  personal  distinctions,  yet  in  community  of  life,  com- 
municative, communicated,  reciprocated,  in  ceaseless  flow  and 
ebb,  streaming  from  its  source  in  the  eternal  subject,  retreating 
from  its  bourn  in  the  eternal  Object,  moving  in  the  un- 
beginning,  unending  cycle  which  is  the  bosom  of  the  Infinite. 
What  He  is  as  Godhead  He  must  remain  as  God  ; the  energies 
exercised  without  only  express  the  life  within.  The  inward 
and  the  outward  face  of  Deity,  if  we  may  so  speak,  is  one 
face  ; and  He  whose  inner  life  is  a community  of  love  must 
be  in  His  outer  action  creative  of  conditions  correspondent  to 
those  within.  Hence  He  who  is  by  His  essence  a society  will 
so  act  as  to  create  an  outward  society  which  shall  reflect  His 
inner  relations.  The  law  of  the  Divine  working  is  the  Divine 
nature,  and  as  is  the  nature  such  must  be  the  work.  The 
internal  Sonship  is  normative  of  the  external ; and  as  Father- 
hood is  essential  to  the  Godhead,  it  is  natural  to  God ; all  the 
qualities  it  implies  within  Deity  are  expressed  and  exercised 
in  His  activity  within  the  universe.  And  therefore,  while 


ATTRIBUTES  OF  FATHER  AND  SOVEREIGN. 


441 


Jesus  speaks  of  Himself  as  the  Son  and  of  God  as  the  Father, 
He  teaches  men  also  so  to  speak.  The  relation  of  the  only 
begotten  Son,  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  is,  as  it  were, 
the  prototype  and  idea  of  the  many  sons  who  play  round  the 
Father’s  feet.  And  so  we  conclude  that  God  cannot  be  other 
without  than  the  Godhead  is  within  ; the  outer  action  and 
relations  and  the  inner  being  and  character  must  be  correlative 
and  correspondent. 

§ V. — God  as  Father  and  as  Sovereign. 

If,  then,  we  interpret  God  through  the  Godhead,  the  result 
will  be  a conception  which,  instead  of  dividing  and  opposing, 
unites  and  harmonizes  the  ideas  of  Fatherhood  and  Sovereignty. 
These  terms  denote,  not  so  much  distinct  or  contrary  functions 
which  Deity  may  successively  or  contemporaneously  fulfil  for 
opposite  purposes  and  as  regards  different  persons,  but  rather 
the  attitude  and  action  of  a Being  who  must  by  nature  fulfil 
both  if  He  is  to  fulfil  either.  We  may  distinguish  them  as 
we  distinguish  love  and  righteousness,  which  we  may  term  the 
paternal  and  regal  attributes  of  God  ; but  they  are  as  insepar- 
able as  these,  and  form  as  real  a unity.  We  may  say  alike  of 
the  attributes  and  the  functions, — Were  they  divorced,  both 
would  be  destroyed  ; and  were  either  denied  to  Deity,  He 
would  be  undeified.  To  love  is  to  be  righteous  ; to  be  un- 
righteous is  to  be  incapable  of  love.  Love  is  righteousness  as 
emotion,  motive,  and  end  ; righteousness  is  love  as  action  and 
conduct.  Love  is  perfect  being  ; righteousness  is  perfect  be- 
haviour ; and  so  they  may  be  described  as  standing  to  each 
other  as  law  and  obedience.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  both  to 
be  transitive.  Love  regards  an  object  whose  good  it  desires  ; 
righteousness  is  the  conduct  which  fulfils  the  desire  of  love. 
Love  as  it  desires  another  hates  the  evil  that  mars  his  good  ; 
righteousness  as  it  serves  another  judges  the  evil  that  defeats 
the  service.  Hence  love  is  social,  but  righteousness  judicial ; 
the  law  the  one  prescribes  the  other  enforces.  And  so  they 


442 


CONSTITUENTS  AND  RELATIONS  OF  LOVE 


must  exist  together  in  order  to  exist  at  all.  Subtract  love 
from  righteousness,  and  it  becomes  mere  rigour,  conduct  too 
inflexible  to  be  living,  justice  too  severe  to  be  just.  Subtract 
righteousness  from  love,  and  it  ceases  to  be,  becomes  mere 
sentiment,  an  emotion  too  pitiful  to  combine  truth  with 
grace.  Love  makes  righteousness  active  and  helpful  ; right- 
eousness makes  love  beneficent  while  benevolent. 

Each  of  these  qualities  is  of  course  capable  of  analysis  into 
much  simpler  elements.  Love  as  the  causal  impulse  or  need 
of  another  determines  the  nature  of  the  other  that  is  needed  ; 
he  must  be  a being  whose  happiness  can  be  willed,  the  happiness 
of  a kind  which  depends  on  fellowship  with  his  Maker.  For 
the  other  that  love  needs,  it  needs  for  fellowship  ; and  fellow- 
ship is  made  possible  by  affinities  ; it  is  the  communion  of 
natures  akin.  Without  affinities  love  cannot  live.  And  so  for 
God  to  love  man,  man  must  be  akin  to  God  ; for  man  to  love 
God,  God  must  be  akin  to  man.  In  all  love,  then,  there  must 
be  sympathy,  which  is  a sort  of  mutual  or  inter-incorporation 
of  being,  of  the  loved  in  the  loving,  of  the  loving  in  the  loved. 
In  sympathy  the  soul  that  loves  feels  as  its  own  every  shadow, 
every  emotion,  every  experience  that  passes  over  or  through 
the  soul  of  the  loved.  It  is,  as  it  were,  the  vicarious  principle  ; 
where  it  is  there  is  substitution  by  the  absorption,  ideally,  of 
the  object  into  the  subject,  such  an  inter-penetration  of  two 
beings  that  whatever  lives  in  the  one  or  happens  to  him  be- 
comes a matter  of  real,  vivid,  personal  experience  to  the  other. 
In  a world  of  happiness  it  creates  double  beatitude  ; in  a world 
of  misery  it  is  to  the  good  the  double  suffering  men  call 
sacrifice.  Where  it  lives  we  have  “ one  passion  in  twin  hearts,” 
which  “ touch,  mingle,  and  are  transfigured  ” ; and  the  result  is 

“ One  hope  within  two  wills,  one  will  beneath 
Two  overshadowing  minds,  one  life,  one  death, 

One  heaven,  one  hell,  one  immortality.” 

But  this  identifying  or  inter-incorporating  power  of  love  which 
we  term  sympathy  involves  two  opposite  elements,  whose 


AND  RIGHTEOUSNESS  AS  ATTRIBUTES  OF  GOD.  443 

being  is  conditioned  on  the  state  of  the  object — where  that 
state  is  good  it  gives  joy,  where  evil  it  creates  pity.  And  these 
two  cannot  live  inactive  and  self-centred.  Joy  is  an  emotion 
which  will  not  be  suppressed,  and  for  it  to  be  expressed  is  to 
be  creative,  the  happiness  that  does  not  create  happiness 
turning  into  misery  in  the  breast  that  feels  it.  And  pity  when 
it  sees  misery  becomes  mercy,  the  passion  of  helpfulness,  the 
will  that  has  no  choice  save  to  end  the  evil  by  the  creation 
of  more  and  higher  good.  And  these  two  in  their  one  and 
common  activity  constitute  grace,  which  is  the  spontaneous 
yet  inexorable  impulse  of  the  ever-blessed  God  to  create 
beatitude.  In  this  sense  grace  is  only  the  exercised  love  of 
God,  acting  in  the  forms  needed  by  a real  and  dependent 
world  as  it  had  acted  in  a world  ideal  and  Divine. 

Love  is  essentially  the  attribute  of  motives  and  ends,  but 
righteousness  of  means  and  agencies.  It  may  be  described 
as  in  a sense  the  executive  of  love  ; it  is,  as  it  were,  the  will 
using  the  fit  means  to  reach  and  realize  the  ends  of  the  heart. 
Love  regards  persons  and  their  states,  but  righteousness  the 
methods  by  which  these  can  be  effected  for  good.  So  under- 
stood it  is  purposive,  selective  ; wisdom  not  simply  as  ad- 
visory, but  as  effective  and  efficient,  applied  to  the  realization 
of  the  means  that  shall  best  realize  the  ends.  It  is  thus  a 
rational  will,  a power  which  intelligence  guides  while  love 
rules.  But  the  will  that  purposes  creates  ; and  what  it  creates 
corresponds  to  its  motive  and  end  ; it  is  therefore,  as  creative 
of  good  will,  the  sole  efficient  will  of  good.  But  in  doing  this 
it  expresses  the  moral  perfection  of  Him  whose  will  it  is,  and 
this  perfection  is  holiness,  or  the  absolute  agreement  of  act 
and  nature,  or  character  and  will.  But  He  who  exhibits  this 
agreement  cannot  demand  less  than  He  realizes,  and  this 
demand  is  expressed  in  a twofold  form, — what  we  may  call 
the  legislative,  embodied  in  conscience,  which  shows  the  law 
that  governs  the  will  of  Deity  translated  into  a law  for  man’s  ; 
and  the  administrative,  expressed  in  the  order  of  history, 


444  FATHERHOOD  BASED  NOT  ON  PHYSICAL  ACT, 

personal  and  collective.  The  former  is  judgment ; the  latter  is 
justice;  and  they  are  related  as  law  enacted  and  law  enforced. 
Wisdom  as  selective  determines  means,  goodness  their  kind, 
holiness  their  quality,  judgment  their  form,  justice  their 
vindication  or  enforcement.  These  are  all  necessary  to  the 
righteousness  of  the  sovereign  will.  Remove  the  wisdom,  and 
it  would  not  be  the  best ; remove  the  goodness,  and  it  would 
not  be  the  highest  ; remove  the  holiness,  and  it  would  not  be 
whole  or  the  will  of  a sound  and  perfect  nature ; remove  the 
judgment,  and  it  would  not  be  directive  ; remove  the  justice, 
and  it  would  not  be  regnant.  God  as  ethical  can  never 
abandon  sovereignty ; to  be  indifferent  to  the  moral  state  of 
His  creatures  would  be  to  be  false  to  Himself,  to  His  nature, 
to  His  love,  to  all  the  ends  for  which  He  created.  To  think  of 
God  is  thus  to  think  of  a Being  who  can  never  be  gentle  or 
indulgent  to  sin.  The  judge  does  not  fear  crime  as  the  father 
fears  the  very  taint  of  vice  ; the  sovereign  does  not  hate  the 
violation  of  law  as  the  parent  hates  the  very  shadow  of  coming 
disobedience.  Evil  is  a more  terrible  thing  to  the  family  than 
to  the  state  ; and  so  the  theology  which  reduces  God’s  govern- 
ment to  one  “ legal  and  judicial,”  “ in  the  proper  forensic 
sense,”  makes  far  more  light  of  sin  than  the  theology  which 
conceives  it  through  His  sovereign  Paternity. 

§ VI. — Paternity  and  Sonship. 

Our  conclusion,  then,  is  this : — the  antithesis  between  the 
Fatherhood  and  Sovereignty  of  God  is  fictitious,  violent,  per- 
verse. The  Father  is  the  Sovereign  ; and  as  the  Father  is  such 
must  the  Sovereign  be.  Hence  the  primary  and  determinative 
conception  is  the  Fatherhood,  and  so  through  it  the  Sovereignty 
must  be  read  and  interpreted.  In  all  His  regal  acts  God  is 
paternal ; in  all  His  paternal  ways  regal  ; but  His  is  not 
the  figurative  paternity  of  the  king,  though  His  is  the  real 
kinghood  of  the  Father. 

How  we  are  to  define  the  notion  of  Fatherhood  is  a point 


BUT  ON  ACTS  ETHICALLY  CONDITIONED. 


445 


on  which  there  has  been  much  barren  dialectic.  Pearson  ^ 
describes  the  Divine  Paternity  thus  : “ The  first  and  most 
universal  notion  of  it,  in  a borrowed  or  metaphorical  sense, 
is  founded  rather  upon  creation  than  procreation  ” ; and 
then  he  amplifies  and  develops  it  by  the  notions  of  “con- 
servation,” “ redemption,”  “ regeneration,”  and  “ adoption.” 
The  late  Dr.  Crawford,  in  his  “ Reply  ” to  Dr.  Candlish, 
framed  his  definition  on  Pearson  thus  : “ Fatherhood  implies 
the  origination  by  one  intelligent  person  of  another  intelligent 
person  like  in  nature  to  himself,  and  the  continued  support, 
protection,  and  nourishment  of  the  person  thus  originated  by 
him  to  whom  he  owes  his  being.”  ^ To  which  Dr.  Candlish 
sensibly  replied,  “Such  a universal  Fatherhood  I do  not 
care  to  call  in  question.”^  For  all  that  we  have  is  a figurative 
and  euphonious  way  of  describing  creation  and  Providence. 
But  our  discussions  have  throughout  proceeded  upon  this 
principle  : — Fatherhood  cannot  here  be  stated  in  the  terms 
of  physical  creation  or  procreation,  which  represents  an  instru- 
mental or  a secondary  cause,  but  only  in  the  terms  of  ethical 
motive,  relation,  and  end.  It  is  not  the  physical  act  as 
physical  that  is  constitutive  of  Paternity,  but  the  act  as 
ethically  conditioned  and  determined.  Man  is  God’s  son,  not 
simply  because  God’s  creature  and  Godlike,  but  because  of  the 
God  and  the  ends  of  the  God  whose  creature  he  is.  Father- 
hood did  not  come  through  creation,  but  rather  creation  came 
because  of  Fatherhood.  The  essential  love  out  of  which  crea- 
tion issued  determined  the  standing  of  the  created  before 
the  Creator  and  the  relation  of  the  Creator  to  the  created. 
Where  love  is  causal,  it  is  paternal  ; where  it  creates  a fellow 
with  whom  it  can  have  fellowship,  the  relation  of  the  created 
is  filial.  Spiritual  and  personal  relations  which  have  their 
causes  and  ends  in  spiritual  and  personal  needs,  cannot  be 
stated  in  the  terms  of  physical  creation  or  political  institution, 

' “ On  the  Creed,”  sub  Art.  i.  ^ u xhe  Fatherhood  of  God,”  pp.  9-10. 

® Candlish’s  “ Reply,”  p.  8. 


446 


THE  FATHERHOOD  DEFINED 


but  only  in  those  of  the  heart  and  the  life.  And  the  aboriginal 
relation  of  man  and  God  is  the  universal  and  permanent  ; 
within  it  all  later  possibilities  are  contained.  It  is  the  emptiest  * 
nominalism  to  speak  of  the  adoption  of  a man  who  never  was 
a son,  for  the  term  can  denote  nothing  real.  The  legal  fiction 
has  a meaning  and  a use  only  where  it  represents  or  pretends 
to  represent  something  in  the  world  of  fact ; but  to  speak  of 
the  “ adoption  ” of  a creature  who  is  in  no  respect  a son,  is  to 
use  a term  which  is  here  without  the  saving  virtue  of  sense. 
The  Sonship  must  be  real  to  start  with  if  adoption  is  ever  to 
be  real,  and  its  reality  depends  on  the  reality  of  the  Paternity. 

If  the  motives  and  ends  of  God  in  the  creation  of  man  were 
paternal,  then  man’s  filial  relation  follows,  and  it  stands, 
however  unworthy  a son  he  may  prove  himself  to  be. 

Were  we,  then,  to  attempt  to  form  a notion  of  the  Paternity, 
it  would  be  through  the  Godhead  as  determining  the  act  of 
God,  the  kind  of  creatures  it  produces,  and  the  peculiar  and 
special  relations  in  which  He  and  they  will  stand  to  each  other. 
Thus  : — 

i.  The  end  of  creation  existed  before  the  creative  act- 

The  reXo?  was  before  the  actual  and  creation  was  but  a 

means  for  the  realization  of  the  end. 

ii.  The  means  were  in  harmony  with  the  end,  but  the  end 
in  harmony  with  the  Creator.  God  willed  as  He  was.  The 
idea  of  the  election  of  one  from  among  an  infinite  multitude 
of  possible  worlds,  is  a philosophical  myth  ; the  only  possible 
world  was  the  one  realized.  The  Divine  will  is  not  contingent 
or  arbitrary  because  it  is  free  ; the  free  action  is  spontaneous, 
an  action  into  which  the  whole  nature  as  a whole,  as  it  were, 
involuntarily  and  harmoniously  blossoms.  God  might  or 
might  not  have  acted  ; but  if  He  did  act,  the  way  He  took 
was  the  only  way  possible  to  Him. 

iii.  The  nature  which  determined  the  end  was  the  unity 
which  we  speak  of  as  the  Godhead.  In  it  Fatherhood  and 
Sonship  were  essential  and  immanent,  and  so  the  end  may  be 


AND  REALIZED  THROUGH  SONSHIP. 


447 


described  as  the  realization  of  external  relations  correspondent 
to  the  internal ; in  other  words,  the  creation  of  a universe 
which  should  be  to  God  as  a son,  while  He  was  to  it  as  a 
Father.  As  within  the  Godhead  so  conceived  all  love  was 
law,  so  within  the  universe  He  created  all  law  was  love. 

iv.  The  universe  He  thus  created  is  personal  and  spiritual ; 
all  its  units  are  capable  of  loving  as  of  being  loved ; and  where 
such  capability  exists  we  can  best  express  the  causal  relation 
by  the  term  Paternity,  and  the  created  by  Sonship. 

V.  But  these  two  notions  may  seem  empty  and  unrelated  if 
they  remain  mere  notions  ; the  definition  that  comes  of  actual 
being  can  alone  make  them  real.  And  here  emerges  the 
significance  of  the  historical  and  normative  person  of  Christ, 
which  we  may  exhibit  thus  : (a)  His  is  the  normal  humanity, 
God’s  ideal  realized.  Hence  it  follows  that  all  the  relations 
man  by  nature  sustains  towards  God,  He  perfectly  sustained. 
(/3)  Of  these  the  most  characteristic  and  fundamental  was  the 
filial.  Without  it  His  humanity  would  not  have  been  perfect, 
and  so  it  is  as  Son  that  He  learns  obedience  and  attains  perfec- 
tion. (7)  The  Sonship  that  was  necessary  to  Him  is  common 
to  man.  He  is  a unit  who  is  universal  ; and  what  is  here  true 
of  His  nature  is  true  of  man’s.  On  His  Sonship  His  brother- 
hood is  based  ; and  through  His  brotherhood  man’s,  as  real  and 
universal,  is  guaranteed.  (S)  The  Sonship  He  realized  is  the 
ideal  of  the  race  All  God  was  to  Him,  He  was  meant  to  be 
and  wants  to  be  to  every  man  ; all  He  was  to  God,  every  man 
ought  to  be  and  may  become.  The  very  reason  of  His  being 
was  to  exhibit  through  the  ideal  relation  of  man  to  God  the 
actual  relation  of  God  to  man.  (e)  The  embodied  ideal  is  the 
supreme  reality.  In  Christ  we  see  it,  not  only  within  the 
terms  of  finitude,  but  under  the  conditions  of  suffering  which 
is  sorest  sacrifice  because  of  the  sins  and  the  states  of  brothers 
who  will  not  be  sons.  Yet  we  see  it  that  we  may  be  redeemed 
by  being  made  partakers  of  His  Spirit,  and  so  qualified  for 
adoption  out  of  the  sonship  of  nature  into  the  Sonship  of  grace. 


448  the  fatherhood  the  basis  of  duty. 

vi.  The  truth  illustrated  by  the  person  is  enforced  by  the 
teaching  of  Christ.  He  makes  the  Fatherhood  the  basis  of  all 
the  duties  which  man  owes  to  God.  Supreme  love  to  God  is 
possible  only  because  God  is  love.  On  the  ground  of  mere 
sovereignty  or  judicial  and  autocratic  authority,  the  first 
commandment  could  never  be  enjoined.  We  cannot  love 
simply  because  we  will  or  wish  or  are  commanded,  but  only 
because  we  are  loved.  Supreme  affection  is  possible  only 
through  the  Sovereign  Fatherhood.  And  what  is  true  of  this 
first  is  true  of  all  our  other  duties.  Worship  is  to  be  in  spirit 
and  in  truth,  because  it  is  worship  of  the  Father.  Prayer  is 
to  be  constant  and  simple  and  sincere,  because  it  is  offered  to 
the  Father.  We  are  to  give  alms  in  simplicity  and  without 
ostentation,  because  the  Father  sees  in  secret.  We  are  to  be 
forgiving,  because  the  Father  forgives.  Obedience  is  imitation 
of  God,  a being  perfect  as  our  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect. 
In  a word,  duty  is  but  the  habit  of  the  filial  spirit ; and  it  is 
possible  and  incumbent  on  all  men,  because  all  are  sons. 


DIVISION  III. 


A.— GOD  AS  INTERPRETED  BY  CHRIST  THE 
DETERMINATIVE  PRINCIPLE  IN  THEOLOGY. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  AND  SIN. 

§ I.— The  Formal  and  the  Material  Principle  of 

Theology. 


HE  conclusion  from  the  preceding  discussion  may  be 


stated  thus : — the  Fatherhood  neither  limits  nor  con- 


tradicts, but  qualifies  and  determines  the  Sovereignty  ; the 
King  must  be  construed  through  the  Father,  the  Father 
cannot  be  educed  from  the  King.  In  other  words,  the 
theology  which  starts  from  the  consciousness  of  Christ  finds 
that  the  determinative  element  in  His  idea  of  God  is  the 
paternal,  and  in  His  idea  of  man  the  filial.  But  this  con- 
clusion is  only  the  premiss  of  a constructive  or  interpretative 
science,  and  all  the  positions  evolved  in  the  science  are  in- 
volved in  the  premiss.  In  the  older  systems  there  was  a 
familiar  distinction  between  the  principiiim  cognoscendi  and 
the  principium  essendi ; in  later  systems  the  former  appears  as 
the  formal  principle  or  source  of  theology,  the  latter  as  the 
material  or  real  principle  or  source.^  The  distinction  is,  as  it 

^ Cf.  on  this  distinction,  Dorner,  “ Gesammelte  Schriften,”  Essay  ii., 
pp.  48-152. 


29 


450  FORMAL  SOURCE,  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS  ; 

were,  between  the  fountain  whence  we  draw  the  water  and 
the  water  we  draw.  Theologies  and  Churches  have  differed 
both  as  to  the  nature  and  the  relation  of  these  sources.  The 
formal  source  has  been  conceived  as  the  Scriptures  and 
tradition,  or  the  Scriptures  and  the  Church,  or  as  the  Church 
alone,  or  as  the  Scriptures  alone.  The  material  source,  the 
articulus  priinarius^  or  fimdamentalis^  has  been  conceived  to 
be  the  Church,  or  justification  by  faith,  or  the  Incarnation,  or 
the  sovereign  will  of  God.^  And  these  sources  are  so  related, 
that  while  the  material  determines  the  theology,  the  formal 
determines  the  material.  If  a man  holds  the  Church  and 
tradition  to  be  joint  sources  of  knowledge  with  the  Scriptures, 
he  cannot  possibly  find  his  material  principle  in  justification 
by  faith  or  the  sovereign  will  of  God  ; while  if  he  holds  the 
Scriptures  to  be  the  sole  formal  source,  he  cannot  possibly 
regard  the  Church  or  its  decrees  as  the  material.  Where  a 
man  goes  for  knowledge  really  determines  what  its  matter 
will  be,  though  not  where  its  emphasis  will  fall. 

In  these  discussions  it  has  been  everywhere  assumed  that 
our  formal  source  is  the  consciousness  of  Christ.  This  is 
what  we  must  know  if  we  would  find  our  material  or  con- 
structive principle.  In  order  to  it  the  Scriptures  are  neces- 
sary, but  as  a medium  or  channel  which  conducts  to  the 
source,  not  as  the  source  itself  They  testify  of  Christ,  are 
His  witnesses  ; but  it  is  as  witnesses  that  they  are  essential, 
and  their  value  is  in  proportion  to  their  veracity.  And  our 
material  is  as  our  formal  source.  It  is  the  ultimate  de- 
liverance of  His  consciousness.  We  cannot  accept  Luther’s 
article  of  a standing  or  falling  Church  as  our  principium 
esse7idt.  It  is  Paul’s  rather  than  Christ’s  ; it  may  be  true, 
but  it  still  remains  what  it  was  at  first — a deduction  by  a 
disciple,  not  a principle  enunciated  by  the  Master.  Nor  can 
we  accept  the  Incarnation  as  the  material  and  determinative 
doctrine.  This  was  made  by  many  Lutheran  thinkers  deter- 
* Sup?'a^  pp.  155,  156. 


MATERIAL  SOURCE,  THE  GOD  HE  REVEALS.  45 1 

minative  of  their  position  over  against  the  Reformed,  as  the 
older  article  had  determined  their  antithesis  to  Rome.  And 
the  later  doctrine,  as  much  more  central  and  characteristic, 
tended  to  supersede  the  earlier.  For  one  thing,  it  justified 
their  sacramental  theory;  for  another  thing,  justification  could 
be  more  easily  evolved  from  it  than  it  from  justification ; 
thirdly,  it  involved  a profounder  and  truer  philosophy  of  the 
relations  of  man  and  God  ; and,  fourthly,  allowed  stronger 
emphasis  to  fall  upon  the  person  of  Christ,  and  through 
it  upon  His  work.  From  the  Lutherans  the  notion  has 
filtered  through  various  channels  into  the  modern  Anglican 
consciousness,  which  loves  to  describe  Christianity  as  “ the 
religion  of  the  Incarnation,”  ^ the  Church  as  naturally  of  a piece 
with  it,^  and  as  continuing  its  work.^  But  whatever  the 
historical  place  and  function  of  the  person  of  Christ,  it  is 
clear  that  the  Incarnation  cannot  be  the  material  or  deter- 
minative principle  of  Christian  thought  or  theology.  For  it 
is  a derivative,  or  secondary  and  determined  doctrine,  not  one 
primary,  independent,  determinative.  In  the  consciousness 
of  Christ  the  Father  is  at  once  primary  and  ultimate,  the 
normative  and  necessary  principle  ; but  the  filial  feeling  is  the 
dependent  and  normated.  All  He  does  is  done  because  of 
the  Father  and  for  Him.  The  Father  sends  the  Son,  works 
through  Him,  abides  in  Him,  raises  Him  up,  and  glorifies 
Him.  The  Father  is  first  and  last,  the  cause  and  end  of  the 

^ “ Lux  Mundi,”  has  as  its  sub-title,  “ A Series  of  Studies  in  the  Re- 
ligion of  the  Incarnation.”  Curiously,  the  Incarnation  is  the  very  thing 
the  book  does  not,  in  any  more  than  the  most  nominal  sense,  either 
discuss  or  construe. 

^ Gore,  “ The  Church  and  the  Ministry,”  p.  64. 

® Mr.  Lock,  in  “ Lux  Mundi,”  p.  367.  Cf.  a fine  passage  in  Hooker 
which  the  idealism  of  the  Reformed  Theology  has  strongly  influenced 
(bk.  V.,  Ivi.  7).  We  are  in  Christ  ideally  and  eternally  according  to  the 
Divine  foreknowledge  ; but  from  our  actual  adoption  into  the  body  of  His 
true  Church,  we  are,  “by  virtue  of  this  mystical  conjunction,  of  Him  and  in 
Him,  even  as  though  our  very  flesh  and  bones  should  be  made  continuate 
with  His.” 


452 


SIN  DISTINGUISHED  FROM  ITS  COGNATES. 


Son’s  appearance  and  achievements.  And  so  the  conclusion 
is  inevitable : — if  we  attempt  to  construct  a theology  which 
shall  be  faithful  to  the  consciousness  of  Christ,  the  Fatherhood 
must  be  the  determinative  principle  of  our  thought.  It  is  the 
architectonic  idea  ; out  of  it  the  whole  system  must  grow  ; 
with  it  all  elements  and  deductions  must  be  in  harmony  : all 
else  is  body ; it  alone  is  the  informing  soul. 

§ II. — The  Doctrine  of  Sin. 

The  correlative  ideas  which  we  have  to  bring  into  explicit  rela- 
tions and  to  explicate  into  the  first  lines  of  a Christian  theology 
are  those  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  sonship  of  man. 
God  is  by  nature  Father,  and  man  is  by  nature  son  ; and  of 
these  two  the  normal  relation  is  one  of  communion  or  fellow- 
ship. But  the  normal  is  not  the  actual  ; its  realization  is 
hindered  by  sin.  Sin  ” is  a religious  term,  intelligible  only  in 
the  realm  of  religious  experience  and  thought.  “Evil”  is  a 
philosophical  term,  and  denotes  every  condition,  circumstance, 
or  act  that  in  any  manner  or  degree  interferes  with  complete 
perfection  or  happiness  of  being,  whether  physical,  meta- 
physical, or  moral.  “ Vice  ” is  an  ethical  term  ; it  is  moral 
evil  interpreted  as  an  offence  against  the  ideal  or  law  given  in 
the  nature  of  man  : it  is  the  blot  or  stain  left  by  the  departure 
from  nature.  “ Crime  ” is  a legal  term,  denotes  the  open  or 
public  violation  of  the  law  which  a society  or  state  has  framed 
for  its  own  preservation  and  the  protection  of  its  members. 
But  sin  differs  from  these  in  this  respect : — they  may  be  in  a 
system  which  knows  no  God,  but  without  God  there  can  be 
no  sin.  It  belongs  to  its  very  essence  to  be,  as  it  were,  trans- 
cendental and  extra-temporal.  Evil,  as  metaphysical,  belongs, 
whether  privative  or  positive,  to  being  and  states  of  being ; 
vice,  as  ethical,  belongs  to  actions  and  characters  which  ought 
to  be  regulated  by  nature,  but  are  not  ; crime,  as  political 
and  legal,  belongs  to  acts  which  can  be  publicly  judged 
and  punished  ; but  sin,  as  religious,  is  the  evil  person  and 


IMPOSSIBLE  IN  A SYSTEM  WITHOUT  GOD. 


453 


vicious  or  criminal  act  viewed  sub  specie  ceternitatis.  Evil 
may  be  collective  and  common  ; vice  is  personal  and  private, 
crime  personal  and  public  ; but  sin  is  at  once  individual  and 
collective,  a thing  of  nature  and  of  will,  common  to  a race, 
yet  peculiar  to  a person.  Evil  may  be  under  a system  of 
necessity,  vice  in  a state  of  nature,  crime  in  a social  or 
political  state,  but  sin  only  in  a system  which  knows  the 
majesty  and  the  reign  of  God.  It  involves,  like  evil,  the 
notions  of  suffering  and  loss  ; like  vice,  the  notions  of  dis- 
obedience and  blame  ; like  crime,  the  notions  of  revolt  and 
wrong,  culpability  and  penalty ; but  it  enlarges  almost  to 
infinity  all  these  ideas  and  elements,  and  combines  them  into 
a unity  representative  of  man’s  personal  and  collective  being 
under  a Divine  Sovereignty  he  has  denied  or  forgotten.  Sin 
has  no  meaning  without  God  and  His  purpose  concerning 
man.  It  signifies  that  man  has  missed  the  end  for  which  he 
was  made  ; that  he  is  not  in  character  and  state,  in  idea  and 
reality,  in  act  and  function,  what  he  was  created  to  be  ; and 
that  he  himself  is  the  cause  of  this  failure.  But  not  to  have 
God  as  an  end  is  to  have  self  as  centre  and  law ; what  is  from 
the  standpoint  of  God  disobedience,  is  from  the  experience 
and  personality  of  the  creature  selfishness.  Sin  is  in  its  posi- 
tive character  the  substitution  of  self  for  God  as  the  law  and 
end  of  our  being  ; in  its  negative  character  it  is  transgression  or 
violation  of  law.  We  refuse  to  obey  God’s  will,  and  instead  we 
obey  our  own — i.e.^  we  make  ourselves  into  our  god,  and  attempt 
to  force  Him  and  all  He  has  created  into  servants  to  our  wills, 
means  to  our  ends.  There  is  therefore,  to  speak  with  the 
older  theologians,  something  infinite  in  sin.  An  infinite  act 
by  a finite  being,  even  though  done  against  the  Infinite,  is 
indeed  absurd ; but  what  the  phrase  means  is  this  : — sin,  alike 
as  act  and  state,  belongs  to  the  relations  of  man  to  God,  and 
partakes  of  the  immensity  of  these  relations  ; with  them  it 
lies  outside  time,  and  involves  issues  to  which,  alike  as  regards 
intensity  and  duration,  limits  cannot  possibly  be  set.  God’s  end 


454  OTHER  RELIGIONS  KNOW  CRIME  AND  MISERY, 


for  man  is  a state  which,  as  eternal  fellowship  with  Himself, 
is  an  everlasting  progression  towards  the  Divine ; and  the  act 
which,  by  the  substitution  of  self  for  God,  hinders  this,  has  in 
it  the  quality  of  infinitude.  Hence  sin  stands  distinguished 
from  evil,  vice,  and  crime  by  all  their  elements  appearing  in 
it  under  the  categories  of  the  transcendental  and  the  eternal. 

Sin,  as  thus  defined  and  conceived,  is  not  simply  a religious, 
but  a specifically  Christian  notion  ; indeed,  we  may  describe 
it,  whether  understood  as  idea  or  consciousness  or  both,  as 
an  express  and  peculiar  creation  of  Christianity.  No  other 
religion  knows  it  or  has  its  precise  equivalent.  Hellenism  as 
philosophical  knew  vice,  and  as  religious  knew  defilement, 
which  is  a ceremonial  rather  than  a moral  idea  ; but  its  gods 
had  too  little  ethical  majesty,  and  their  rule  was  too  void 
of  ethical  character,  to  allow  it  to  know  anything  of  sin. 
Judaism  knew  crime,  which  was  an  offence  against  the  God 
who  had  instituted  the  state,  and  uncleanness,  which  was  an 
offence  against  the  ritual  of  the  Temple  or  the  traditions  of 
the  schools  ; but  there  was  too  little  of  the  spirit  and  the 
truth  in  its  Deity  to  enable  it  to  comprehend  the  awful  idea 
of  sin.  Indeed,  nothing  so  marks  the  Levitical  system,  as 
a whole,  as  its  inadequate  sense  of  sin  and  its  consequent 
defective  notion  of  sacrifice.  There  are  approximations  in 
Old  Testament  writers  to  the  Christian  idea,  but  only  in 
those  who  have  transcended  the  standpoint  of  the  priest  and 
the  scribe.  Brahmanism,  again,  knows  evil,  but  as  meta- 
physical rather  than  moral,  man’s  being  in  a system  of  illusion, 
divided  by  ignorance  from  his  rest  in  the  Brahma  who  is  the 
only  and  universal  reality.  Buddhism,  which  has  of  all  religions 
the  most  overmastering  sense  of  misery,  has  also  the  least 
sense  of  sin.  Existence  is  to  it  a calamity,  or  even  a kind 
of  crime ; but  in  the  very  degree  that  it  makes  misery  of  the 
essence  of  existence  it  gets  rid  of  sin,  for  it  transmutes  evil 
into  the  victorious  or  regnant  power  from  which  man  escapes 
only  by  escaping  from  the  region  of  personal  or  conscious 


THE  CHRISTIAN  ALONE  KNOWS  SIN. 


455 


being.  Islam,  too,  has  the  idea  of  political  revolt  or  resistance, 
punished  by  such  penalties  as  a political  sovereign  can  inflict ; 
but  sin  is  not  the  essence  of  its  hell  or  holiness  of  its  heaven. 
Indeed,  we  may  say,  the  more  coarsely  and  cruelly  a religion 
depicts  the  pains  and  miseries  of  the  damned,  the  less  does 
it  feel  the  infinity  of  the  evil  within  the  sin  ; once  it  feels  this, 
it  knows  that  no  physical  pictures  can  represent  the  horror 
and  the  darkness  of  the  lost.  And  so  even  within  Christendom 
sin  is  never  so  little  feared  as  when  hell  most  dominates  the 
imagination  ; it  needs  to  be  looked  at  as  it  affects  God  to  be 
understood  and  feared.  It  is,  as  it  were,  the  creature  attempt- 
ing to  deny  to  the  Creator  the  beatitude  he  was  created 
expressly  to  give.  If  man  misses  his  mark,  so  in  a sense  does 
God.  He  may  indeed  cause  even  evil  to  be  His  minister, 
but  He  can  do  it  only  by  making  manifest  to  the  evildoer 
what  the  evil  he  does  is.  And  it  is  in  its  nature  so  malignant 
that  it  may  for  ever  divide  God  from  the  spirits  He  created 
that  He  might  enjoy  their  society  for  ever.  For  the  terms 
of  the  external  must  be  those  of  the  internal  fellowship  of 
God.  The  eternal  beatitude  is  constituted  by  the  communion 
of  Father  and  son  ; and  beatitude  can  be  to  the  created  only 
as  the  created  is  son  in  communion  with  the  Eternal  Father. 
It  is  here,  therefore,  that  the  significance  of  our  determinative 
idea  becomes  apparent.  Sin  is  the  reign  of  unfilial  feeling 
in  the  heart  that  was  made  for  filial  love,  and  where  this 
reigns  the  created  sonship  can  never  fulfil  its  end,  or  the 
creative  Fatherhood  be  satisfied  with  its  unrealized  ideal. 

§ III.— The  Permission  and  Diffusion  of  Sin. 

Out  of  the  many  questions  which  sin,  as  so  conceived, 
raises,  there  are  two  which  concern  our  notion  of  God  : 
(<x)  Why  did  He  permit  sin?  and  (/3)  Why  did  He  so  con- 
stitute and  why  does  He  so  govern  man  that  sin  has  not 
only  a personal  but  a collective  or  racial  and  native  being? 


456 


EVIL  COULD  NOT  FORBID  CREATION. 


(a)  “ Permit  ” is  a term  which  has  both  a physical  and 
an  ethical  sense ; in  its  physical  it  has  here  no  relevance,  in 
its  ethical  it  has  here  no  right  The  term  has  its  physical 
sense  when  construed  through  omnipotence  ; the  Almighty 
can  hinder  anything  He  wills  to  hinder.  He  cannot,  indeed, 
do  impossibilities  ; the  possible  alone  is  possible  of  accomplish- 
ment even  to  the  Almighty.  And  one  of  the  impossibilities 
is,  having  made  man  free,  to  compel  him  to  act  as  if  he  were 
necessitated.  To  suspend  the  will  when  it  inclined  to  sin 
were  to  prevent  sin  by  the  destruction  of  freedom.  And  sin 
were  in  that  case  not  prevented  ; for  the  will  that  had  meant 
to  do  evil  were  an  evil  will,  and  could  never  be  restored  to 
being  without  being  restored  to  evil.  Evil  once  intended  may 
be  vanquished  by  being  allowed  ; but  were  it  hindered  by  an 
act  of  annihilation,  then  the  victory  would  rest  with  the  evil 
which  had  compelled  the  Creator  to  retrace  His  steps.  And, 
to  carry  the  prevention  backward  another  stage,  if  the  possi- 
bility of  evil  had  hindered  the  creative  action  of  God,  then 
He  would  have  been,  as  it  were,  overcome  by  its  very  shadow. 
Into  this  discussion,  then,  omnipotence  cannot  enter.  It 
did  not  permit  sin,  nor  could  it  have  prevented  it  save 
by  either  refusing  to  create  or  by  hastening  to  uncreate  the 
new  created  ; and  even  then  it  would  have  been  the  moved, 
not  the  motive — the  minister  that  obeyed,  not  the  mind  that 
commanded.  But  if  “ permit  ” in  its  physical  sense  is  irre- 
levant, in  its  ethical  it  has  here  no  place.  God  did  not 
“ permit  ” sin  to  be  ; it  is  in  its  essence  the  transgression 
of  His  law,  and  so  His  only  attitude  to  it  is  one  of  oppo- 
sition. It  zs  because  man  has  contradicted  and  resisted 
His  will. 

But  why  did  He  create  a being  capable  of  sinning  ? Only 
so  could  He  create  a being  capable  of  obeying.  The  ability  to 
do  good  implies  the  capability  of  doing  evil  ; and  both  are 
contained  in  the  idea  of  sonship.  To  be  a son  is  to  be  the 
image  of  the  father,  no  mere  instrument  of  his  will,  but  a 


POSSIBLE  WHERE  CREATURES  ARE  SONS. 


457 


repetition  of  himself,  constituted  after  him  in  nature  and 
faculty.  The  engine  can  neither  obey  nor  disobey,  and  the 
creature  who  was  without  this  double  ability  might  be  a 
machine,  but  could  be  no  child.  If,  then,  there  was  to  be  a 
world  of  created  sons,  it  must  be  a world  which  had  evil  and 
good,  sin  and  obedience,  as  possible  alternatives  ; and  the 
possibilities  could  be  determined  only  in  one  way — by  the 
action  and  the  experiment  of  the  new  natures.  Moral  per- 
fection may  be  attained,  but  cannot  be  created  ; God  can 
make  a being  capable  of  moral  action,  but  not  a being  with 
all  the  fruits  of  moral  action  garnered  within  him.  Innocence 
is  the  attribute  of  the  created,  but  holiness  of  the  obedient. 
And,  if  we  may  so  speak,  these  alternative  possibilities  con- 
stitute the  interest  of  creation  for  God  ; because  of  them  it 
needs  Him  more,  appeals  to  Him  more,  calls  more  of  the 
resources  of  His  nature  into  exercise.  It  may  well  be  that 
God  experiences  a deeper  and  a diviner  joy  in  winning  the 
love  of  a creature  that  can  refuse  His  love,  than  in  listening 
to  the  music  of  spheres  that  cannot  choose  but  play.  Nor 
are  we  to  think  of  creation  as  completed ; it  is  only  in  process. 
God  has  made  man,  is  still  making  him  ; and  His  dealings  with 
him  can  begin  only  after  he  is.  This  thing  we  call  sin  has 
come  to  be  in  the  first  act  of  the  drama  ; we  must  see  the  last 
before  we  can  judge  what  it  means.  But  even  now  we  can 
see  this — through  it  attributes  of  God  have  become  known 
that  could  not  otherwise  have  been  manifested,  and  the  beatific 
vision  will  be  all  the  richer  and  the  more  ecstatic  that  the 
Father  it  sees  is  one  who  loved  too  deeply  to  surrender  the 
lost.  In  the  parable  the  sins  of  the  sons  throw  into  grander 
relief  the  grace  of  the  father,  and  the  memory  of  their  own 
evil  must  have  touched  them  with  a deeper  admiration  for 
his  redeeming  good.  And  the  reverence  of  the  moral 
universe  will  be  in  proportion  to  its  knowledge  of  God  ; and 
its  stability  will  be  in  the  measure  of  its  reverence  and  its 
love.  Only  through  the  possibility  of  sin  could  God  have 


458  HEREDITY  IN  SCIENCE,  CONTINUITY  IN  HISTORY, 

sons,  and  it  may  be  that  only  through  the  actuality  of  sin 
could  the  sons  know  God. 

(/3)  But  why  was  the  race  so  constituted  that  sin  when  it 
entered  the  world  became  collective  or  common  as  well  as 
personal  ? This  question  refers  to  facts  which  not  only 
theology  but  science  recognises  and  seeks  to  explain,  especially 
by  the  heredity  we  are  all  beginning  so  dimly  to  understand. 
Our  inheritance  from  the  past  is  too  ancient  for  memory  to 
measure  ; and  though  it  has  much  of  good,  it  has  also  its 
proportion  of  evil.  And  the  pathetic  thing  is  that  the  heir 
enters  upon  his  inheritance  all  unconscious  of  its  being  or  his 
own.  The  home  into  which  he  is  born,  the  family  in  which 
he  is  nursed,  the  school  in  which  he  is  educated,  the  society  in 
which  he  lives,  evoke  and  exercise  his  latent  qualities  ; and  he 
discovers  that  nature  is  older  than  his  person,  the  action  of 
collective  forces  prior  to  the  operation  of  the  will.  Now,  the 
evil,  whether  privative  or  positive,  at  once  in  the  nature 
which  incorporates  our  inheritance  from  the  past  and  in  the 
conditions  amid  which  it  is  realized,  represents  what  theology 
has  termed  original  sin,  what  science  knows  in  part  as 
heredity,  and  history  as  the  law  of  continuity.  The  principle 
which  underlies  these  three  things  is  one  and  the  same  ; all 
attempt  to  express  the  idea  that  law  reigns  in  nature  and  in 
man — that  the  present  rises  out  of  the  past,  that  the  forces  that 
mould  the  person  are  older  than  the  person  they  mould. 
But  they  differ  here  : — Science  and  history  are  empirical  and 
real,  see  but  the  operation  of  laws  within  the  limits  of  space 
and  under  the  conditions  of  time,  unconcerned  with  anything 
lying  beyond  sense  and  the  phenomena  it  knows ; but 
theology,  as  transcendental  and  ideal,  looks  at  man  through 
the  universal  and  eternal,  measures  him  in  his  collective  as 
in  his  personal  being  by  no  less  a standard  than  the  mind 
of  God.  And  from  this  point  of  view  theology  sees  things 
hidden  from  those  who  move  on  a lower  plane.  Science 
knows  no  holy  and  profane,  only  a natural  and  a real  • 


AND  COMMON  SIN  IN  THEOLOGY. 


459 


history  knows  no  eternal  and  ideal,  only  a temporal  and  an 
actual  ; and  their  judgments  are  expressed  in  the  language 
of  the  laws  they  know.  But  to  theology  neither  nature  nor 
lime  is  ultimate  ; on  the  contrary,  it  has  to  judge  both  in  the 
light  of  the  Divine  ideal.  And  so  it  finds  in  nature,  as 
embodied  in  man,  forces  that  work  for  evil — in  man,  as  history 
shows  him,  tendencies  that  create  crime  and  wrong  ; and  these 
are  to  it  agencies  or  energies  that  contend  against  God,  sinful 
and  factors  of  sin.  Theology  were  the  blindest  of  all  sciences 
if  it  did  not  see  that  evil  was  something  more  and  mightier 
than  the  habits  and  acts  of  persons,  besetting  the  will  even 
before  it  was  awake  with  potent  beguilements.  “Natura 
corrumpit  personam  ” expresses  a fact  which  science  re- 
cognizes without  condemning  the  nature,  but  theology  so 
formulates  that  the  nature  may  be  expressly  condemned. 

§ IV.— Sin  Common  and  Transmitted. 

Now  we  have  here  two  questions  : (i)  In  what  sense  is  the 
common  or  collective  evil  sin  ? and  (2)  By  what  law  is  its 
distribution  or  transmission  or  continued  operation  governed  ? 

(i)  As  to  the  first  point,  we  must  return  to  distinctions 
already  found  in  Paul.  While  the  common  sin  underlies  and 
precedes  all  individual  transgressions,  yet  in  itself  it  is  not 
transgression  or  offence — it  does  not  involve  culpability  or 
guilt.  It  may  even,  while  it  stands  alone,  entail  privation  or 
loss,  but  not  the  penalties  which  follow  upon  personal  blame. 
It  denotes  at  once  a privative  and  a potential  state  ; as 
privative  it  is  a state  without  merit  and  without  demerit — i.e., 
all  the  qualities  proper  to  personal  action  are  absent,  and  so 
there  is  nothing  upon  which  final  moral  judgment  can  be 
based  ; and  as  potential  it  is  a centre  or  seat  of  the  energies, 
all  still  latent,  stored  by  the  past  in  the  new  organism,  and 
waiting  only  the  fit  conditions  to  develop  into  activity.  But 
this  means  that  the  nature  does  not  conform  to  an  absolute 


460  OF  WHAT  SORT  IS  COMMON  SIN? 

standard  ; it  is  not  ideal  or  normal,  but  has  slumbering  energies 
that  may  wake  in  actual  transgressions.  The  defective 
compass  will  not  speak  truly,  the  watch  that  is  wrong  goes 
wrong,  and  so  neither  can  be  trusted  ; and  we  condemn  not 
merely  the  single  act,  but  the  whole  machine.  And  so  God 
must  judge  natures  as  well  as  acts.  The  nature  where  there 
is  no  positive  good  and  much  potential  evil  has  too  little  of 
the  Divine  in  it  to  be  accepted  and  approved  just  as  it  stands. 
It  has  so  come  through  the  race  as  to  participate  in  the  evil 
of  the  race  ; and  this  participation  has  its  sign  and  seal  in  the 
sufferings  and  the  tendencies  common  to  us  all.  But  while 
all  men  suffer  from  these  defects  of  nature,  yet  for  them  no 
man  is  condemned  ; from  them  every  one  needs  to  be  saved, 
but  on  their  account  alone  no  one  will  be  lost.  The  infant, 
whether  baptized  or  unbaptized,  will  not  peri.sh.  Christ 
calls  all  little  children  unto  Him,  and  says,  “ of  such  is  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.”  And  the  way  into  His  kingdom  is  not 
guarded  by  any  sacrament  which  men  may  give  or  withhold. 
As  the  sin  is  common,  the  way  out  of  it  is  common  too  ; the 
God  who  judges  the  irresponsible  nature  sinful  will  not  deal 
with  it  as  if  it  were  responsible  for  its  sin.  He  can  only  be 
gracious  provided  He  is  just  ; and  He  who  is  Father  of  all  will 
not  forget  His  Fatherhood  where  it  has  been  least  disowned 
and  where  recognition  is  most  needed. 

(2)  But  this  question  can  only  find  its  solution  through  the 
discussion  of  the  second.  The  law  which  governs  the  dis- 
tribution and  transmission  of  sin  is  one  with  the  law  which 
governs  the  distribution  and  transmission  of  righteousness. 
The  law  is  one,  though  the  operation  is  twofold.  If  men  be 
sons  of  God,  then  mankind  is  a family  ; and  where  the  family 
is  a whole  there  the  sin  or  the  good  of  one  is  the  evil  or  the 
gain  of  all.  This  constitution  of,  the  race  may  be  represented 
by  two  great  ideas — its  unity  and  the  solidarity  of  its  con- 
stituent members.  Its  unity  is  at  once  real  and  ideal,  the 
latter  being  expressed  or  incorporated  in  the  former.  The 


UNITY  AND  SOLIDARITY  OF  MAN.  46 1 

great  Being  of  Positivism  was  collective  Humanity ; but  if 
Humanity  be  an  organic  whole,  it  cannot  be  a mere  series, 
successive  or  co-ordinate,  of  detached  phenomena  or  acci- 
dentally aggregated  atoms,  but  must  as  an  organism  embody 
ideas,  be  as  it  were  a structure  built  by  mind.  What 
Positivism  was  too  unideal  to  express  had  been  expressed 
centuries  before  under  varied  forms  in  the  New  Testament. 
The  one  Creator  made  all  merf  of  one  blood  and  for  one 
purpose — to  feel  after  and  to  find  Him  ; and  so  they  were  all 
His  offspring,  constituted,  alike  as  regards  origin,  nature,  and 
end,  a unity,  which,  as  it  were,  incarnated  the  thought  of  the 
constitutive  mind.  Science  has  followed  with  leaden  foot  and 
unquiet  eye  in  the  track  of  faith,  and  through  biology  and 
language  and  history  discovered  the  unities  which  religion 
had  found  through  its  belief  in  God.  But  the  more  we 
conceive  the  race  as  a unity,  the  more  are  we  forced  to  con- 
ceive the  solidarity  of  its  members — i.e.^  all  lie  under  the  law 
of  mutual  and  reciprocal  responsibility.  We  may  be  uncon- 
conscious  of  its  operation,  but  it  operates  none  the  less.  In 
the  home  the  vice  of  the  father  or  the  virtue  of  the  mother  is 
a common  evil  or  good  ; in  the  state  the  character  of  the 
sovereign,  the  genius  of  the  statesman,  the  courage  of  the 
soldier,  the  imagination  of  the  man  of  letters,  the  honour  of 
the  merchant,  the  energy  of  the  industrious,  the  indigence 
of  the  indolent,  the  acts  of  the  criminal,  affect  the  common 
weal.  There  is  no  person  so  mean  or  so  impotent  as  to  be 
without  effect  on  the  whole.  In  universal  history  the  villain 
as  well  as  the  hero  contributes  to  the  final  result.  And  this 
law  of  solidarity  finds  its  supreme  illustrations  in  the  sphere 
of  religion  : here  creative  personalities  exercise  their  mightiest 
lordship,  and  the  evil  will  its  most  disastrous  influence.  The 
names  that  in  theology  embody  good  and  evil  for  the  race  are 
Adam  and  Christ  ; through  the  one  sin  came  to  be,  through 
the  other  righteousness.  They  are  because  opposites  com- 
plementary and  correlative.  If  either  was  to  be,  both  must  be. 


462  THE  TWO  COLLECTIVES,  SIN  AND  RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

If  Adam  and  his  sin  reigned  unto  death,  then  it  could  not 
but  be  that  Christ  and  His  righteousness  would  reign  unto 
eternal  life.  This  means  that  we  cannot  construe  common  or 
collective  sin  apart  or  by  itself ; it  must  be  taken  in  connection 
with  the  common  or  collective  righteousness.  Original  sin 
would  not  in  any  one  of  its  forms  be  tolerable,  were  it  re- 
garded either  as  a complete  or  an  absolute  truth.  Its  uncon- 
ditional reign  over  even  a sihgle  individual,  let  alone  a whole 
race,  would  be  abhorrent  to  the  justice  which  expresses 
Fatherhood.  Its  exists,  therefore,  only  through  its  antithesis, 
and  its  very  being  is  a symbol  that  God  has  not  separated 
Himself  from  the  race,  that  He  feels  its  dependence  and 
claim  upon  Him,  that  even  His  justice  is  a mode  in  which  He 
works  within  and  upon  it  to  prepare  it  for  His  mercy.  But  if 
these  two,  the  common  sin  and  the  common  righteousness, 
only  represent  the  operation  of  a law  due  to  the  filial 
constitution  of  the  race,  then  two  consequences  follow : — First, 
the  unconscious  or  irresponsible  whose  only  sin  is  the  common 
sin  stand  both  in  Christ  and  in  Adam,  and  share  in  the  good 
as  well  as  in  the  evil.  The  race  was  constituted  in  the  Son, 
stands  together  in  Him,  is  His  ; and  all  its  undeveloped 
personalties  are  His  by  right,  by  His  death  redeemed,  and  by 
His  redemption  reclaimed.  Secondly,  the  conscious  and  the 
responsible  determine  their  own  relations  to  the  sin  or  the 
righteousness.  By  transgression  the  one  is  developed  into  per- 
sonal guilt ; by  faith  the  other  becomes  a personal  possession. 
By  the  one  the  man  belongs  to  the  race  whose  head  is  Adam, 
by  the  other  to  the  race  whose  Head  is  Christ.  The  unity  of 
man  is  seen  in  the  reign  of  the  common  law,  with  its  two 
opposite  effects  ; the  principle  of  solidarity  is  seen  in  the 
action  of  the  persons  whose  evil  and  good  the  law  has  dis- 
tributed. But  both  were,  as  regards  being  and  operation, 
made  possible  by  the  filial  constitution  of  the  race. 


FATHERHOOD  AND  SOVEREIGNTY  AGAINST  SIN.  463 


§ V. — Sin  and  the  Regal  Paternity. 

But  sin,  either  in  its  personal  or  collective  form,  cannot  be 
discussed  or  understood  alone  ; and  so  we  must  look  at  it 
from  a higher  point  of  view — viz.,  God’s  action  relative  to  it 
and  to  man.  In  the  very  degree  that  it  affects  man  it  must 
affect  God.  But  in  what  sense  or  manner  can  it  be  said  to 
affect  Him  ? Certain  things  are  from  the  nature  of  the 
case  obvious  at  the  very  outset.  Sin  cannot  change  God’s 
character  or  ends  : what  He  was  before  it  He  is  after  it ; 
what  His  ends  were  they  are  ; and  though  His  action  may  be 
changed,  it  can  only  express  unchanged  mind  and  purpose. 
Sin  is  in  an  equal  degree  an  offence  against  the  paternal  love 
and  the  sovereign  will, — against  the  love,  for  it  defeats  all  the 
motives  and  intentions  of  the  eternal  goodness  ; against  the 
will,  for  it  contradicts  all  the  means  and  ends  of  the  eternal 
righteousness.  But  it  can  annihilate  neither  the  Fatherhood 
nor  the  Sovereignty,  for  it  cannot  annul  either  the  character 
or  the  acts  through  which  they  are ; and  if  these  remain,  they 
must  be  expressed  in  fit  and  relevant  action.  Hence  we  are 
now  concerned  with  the  conduct  or  methods  of  the  regal 
Paternity  relative  to  sin  and  the  sinner. 

I.  As  to  the  Fatherhood.  The  God  who  created  out  of 
love  cannot  cease  to  love  because  His  creatures  have  sinned. 
This  love  must  be  as  immutable  and  universal  as  God  ^ ; and 
it  may  be  said  to  have  a twofold  object — persons,  and  their 
states  or  characters. 

(a)  Persons  as  objects  of  love  have  an  unchangeable  worth 
to  God.  They  cannot  cease  to  be  to  His  consciousness, and  while 
they  are  they  must  be  loved.  Theologies  have  been  written 
on  the  principle  that  the  loss  of  souls  is  a loss  to  the  souls 
and  not  to  God  ; nay,  divines  have  ventured  to  speak  as  if  by 
such  loss  His  glory  and  the  beatitude  of  His  universe  could  in 
.some  manner  be  promoted.  He  created  heaven  and  earth 


* Supra,  pp.  421  ff. 


464  LOVE  WILL  NOT  SURRENDER  THE  LOVED. 


by  a word  ; by  another  word  could  He  uncreate  them,  and 
by  a third  word  call  into  their  vacant  places  new  sons  of 
God,  able  and  willing,  like  the  old,  to  sing  for  joy  on  the  morning 
of  their  birth.  But  these  are  only  forms  under  which  the 
ancient  notion  survives  that  the  Almighty  is  the  equivalent  of 
God.  It  is  not  possible  to  a being  who  has  once  loved  to  lose 
and  to  feel  as  if  the  loss  were  not  his,  or  as  if  it  were  one  that  a 
new  person  with  the  old  name  could  easily  repair.  It  belongs 
to  the  nature  of  love  to  allow  no  substitution,  for  it  lives  by 
virtue  of  its  inability  to  surrender  what  it  possesses.  Affection 
may  be  transferred,  but  cannot  be  distributed  ; love  is  capable 
of  distribution,  but  incapable  of  transference.  Into  a home  a 
child  may  come,  live  awhile,  and  die  ; to  him  another  may 
succeed,  bearing  the  same  name,  recalling  the  vanished  face ; 
but  to  the  mother  the  new  is  not  the  old,  and  the  heart  trembles 
while  it  rejoices  in  the  possession  of  the  living,  for  it  re- 
members the  dead.  So  loss  concerns  God  even  more  than 
man  ; the  loss  of  the  lost  soul  is  not  all  the  soul’s — it  is  God’s 
as  well ; and  where  He  feels  loss  He  can  never  be  satisfied  with- 
out attempting  to  regain.  The  living  sorrow  is  harder  to 
bear  than  the  dead,  for  death  allows  time  to  heal  and  distance 
to  soften  and  memory  to  adorn  with  the  beautiful  things  it 
will  not  forget ; but  life  allows  no  healing  process  to  go  on, 
and  turns  the  very  love  of  the  evil  or  the  shiftless  into  an 
open  sore  of  the  heart.  Yet  in  one  respect  there  is  a happier 
difference : with  death  hope,  so  far  as  concerns  these  modes 
of  being,  has  died  ; but  where  life  is  hope  is,  and  hope  lives 
because  love  will  not  let  it  die.  So  the  love  of  God  as  eternal 
and  universal  will  not  surrender  its  object  to  sin  ; to  it  the 
effort  after  recovery  is  necessary.  To  accept  the  loss  were  to 
cancel  the  love.  He  who  created,  because  a Father,  must  even 
in  the  face  of  sin,  because  of  His  Fatherhood,  seek  to  save  the 
lost. 

(/S)  But  love  regards  characters  and  states  of  being  as  well 
as  persons  ; and  the  purer  it  is  as  personal,  the  intenser  its 


SIN  OPPOSED  TO  HAPPINESS,  GOD  TO  SIN.  465 

jealousy  of  evil.  As  a will  of  good  to  the  person,  it  can  be 
satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  his  happiness.  In  his  w'asted 
existence  it  can  never  rejoice,  nor  can  it  consent  to  regard 
as  normal  his  evil  and  miserable  state.  But  all  sin  is  misery, 
for  misery  is  but  the  symptom  of  a being  which  has  failed  to 
fulfil  its  end.  If  man  was  created  for  God,  then  to  constitute 
himself  God’s  enemy  is  to  be  a sinner,  and  to  be  separated 
from  the  source  of  all  the  good  and  all  the  joy  of  the  universe 
is  to  be  miserable.  But  if  man  fails  of  his  end,  God  will  not  fail 
of  His  purpose.  We  may,  then,  conceive  sin  as  presenting  to 
the  Divine  will  alternative  courses, — either  man  must  be  aban- 
doned to  it  and  in  consequence  to  misery,  or  made  happy  in 
it,  or  saved  from  it.  It  was  not  possible  that  God  could  find 
a reason  in  man  for  the  course  to  be  pursued..  The  motives 
must  be  worthy  of  Himself,  and  so  could  be  found  only  within 
Himself,  in  His  nature  which  gives  the  law  to  His  will.  If 
this,  then,  be  our  standpoint,  it  is  evident  that  the  misery  of 
those  He  loves  and  will  not  cease  to  love,  cannot  but  be 
abhorrent  to  God  ; and  against  its  continuance  He  will 
contend  with  all  His  moral  energies.  To  abandon  souls 
He  loved,  even  though  they  had  abandoned  Him,  would 
be  to  punish  man’s  faithlessness  by  ceasing  to  be  faithful! 
to  Himself  Nor  could  He  make  man  happy  in  sin,  for 
here  there  were  a twofold  impossibility  : first,  happiness  is: 
not  something  that  can  be  made — it  must  be  evoked  from 
within,  earned  that  it  may  be  enjoyed  ; and,  secondly.  His  own 
happiness  is  moral,  and  He  can  create  happiness  only  by 
means  of  a moral  perfection  akin  to  His  own.  What  became 
Him,  then,  was  to  save  man  from  sin.  He  so  loved  the  world 
that  fie  could  do  no  other  than  will  to  save  it.  He  so  pitied 
man  that  to  redeem  him  He  could  not  spare  Himself  To 
say  “ God  is  love  ” means  He  must  be  the  Saviour. 

2.  As  to  the  Sovereignty.  The  love  which  is  the  paternal 
attribute  regards  souls  and  their  states  ; the  righteousness 
which  is  the  regal  attribute  regards  their  acts  and  qualities.  In 

30 


466 


RIGHTEOUSNESS  WILL  EXPEL  SIN, 


■ other  words,  while  the  concern  of  love  is  happiness,  the  concern 
of  righteousness  is  holiness  ; in  the  one  case  the  emphasis  falls 
on  the  sinner,  in  the  other  on  the  sin.  Sin,  then,  wears  a some- 
what different  aspect  to  these  attributes  : to  love  it  is  an  outrage, 
because  an  attempt  to  ruin  its  objects  ; to  righteousness  it  is 
an  offence,  because  it  creates  disorder,  introduces  wrong, 
insult,  licence,  self-will,  turning  the  act  of  one  into  the  injury 
of  all.  Now,  what  is  the  only  attitude  righteousness  can  hold 
to  sin  ? It  can  never  tolerate  it  or  allow  that  it  has  any 
right  to  any  footing  in  the  universe.  The  mere  existence  of 
sin  is  a wrong  which  righteousness  must  resist,  and  seek  to 
end  in  the  only  way  it  can  regard  as  right  or  even  possible 
— viz.,  by  expulsion.  To  expel  the  evil  which  Tertullian  named 
the  great  interloper,  must  ever  remain  the  aim  and  the  effort 
of  the  eternal  righteousness,  or  evil  will  become  a sort  of 
naturalized  or  legitimated  citizen  of  eternity.  But  how  is  it^ 
to  be  expelled  ? There  is  the  way  of  annihilation,  expulsion 
of  sin  by  destruction  of  the  sinner.  But  this  were  a ruthless 
remedy,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of  a rude  physician,  who,  in 
order  to  stay  a disease,  killed  his  patient.  And  if  this  were 
the  method  of  cure,  who  would  be  the  victor — God  or  sin  ? 
Would  not  the  victory  remain  with  the  evil  which  compelled 
God  to  uncreate  His  own  creation  ? There  are  no  difficulties 
connected  with  the  origin  of  evil  at  all  commensurate  with  those 
connected  with  the  ending  of  it  in  a way  so  unworthy  of  the 
wisdom  and  foresight  and  grace  of  God.  The  annihilation  of 
the  creature  either  now  or  at  any  moment  even  inconceivably 
distant,  were  a confession  by  the  Creator  of  utter  helplessness, 
an  acknowledgment  that  the  universe,  or  a part  of  the  uni- 
verse, had  so  broken  down  in  His  hands  that  He  knew  no 
way  of  mending  it  but  by  ending  it.  Then,  if  there  is  any 
truth  in  the  Fatherhood,  would  not  annihilation  be  even  more 
a punishment  of  God  than  of  man  ? The  annihilated  creature 
would  indeed  be  gone  for  ever — good  and  evil,  shame  and 
.misery,  penalty  and  pain,  would  for  him  all  be  ended  with  his 


BUT  NOT  BY  ETERNAL  DESTRUCTION. 


467 


being  ; but  it  would  not  be  so  with  God — out  of  His  memory 
the  name  of  the  man  could  never  perish,  and  it  would  be,  as 
it  were,  the  eternal  symbol  of  a soul  He  had  made  only  to  find 
that  with  it  He  could  do  nothing  better  than  destroy  it.  If, 
then,  we  cannot  conceive  destruction  as  the  method  of  the 
Paternal  Sovereign,  can  we  conceive  the  way  of  penalty  ? 
Penalty,  indeed,  there  must  be.  Fatherhood  is  not  infinite 
good-nature,  oblivious  of  faults,  indulgent  to  the  wrongdoer, 
tolerant  of  wrong.  There  is  something  more  terrible  in  the 
attitude  of  the  father  to  sin  than  of  the  judge  to  crime,  for 
the  judge  sees  in  the  crime  only  an  offence  against  law,  but 
the  father  feels  in  the  sin  the  ruin  of  his  son.  The  judge 
regards  the  criminal  only  as  a person  against  whom  the  law 
is  to  be  vindicated,  but  the  father  regards  the  son  as  a person 
out  of  whom  sin  is  to  be  expelled.  Hence  comes  in  the  father’s 
case  a severity  to  sin  that  does  not  exist  in  the  judge’s  to  crime. 
And  so  sin  is  the  last  thing  the  regal  Paternity  can  be  indulgent 
to  : to  be  merciless  to  it  is  a necessity  ; nothing  that  defiles 
purity  or  threatens  obedience  can  be  spared.  But  this  very 
necessity  prevents  penalty  ever  becoming  merely  retributive 
or  retaliatory.  God  can  never  be  reconciled  to  the  being  of 
sin,  or  be  anything  else  than  its  supreme  enemy.  Were  He 
at  any  point  of  space  or  moment  of  eternity  to  say,  “ Certain 
sinners  must,  in  order  to  vindicative  and  exemplary  punish- 
ment, remain  sinners  for  ever,”  then  He  would,  as  it  were, 
concede  a recognized  place  and  a function  to  sin.  He  would 
accept  it  as  a thing  that  must  be  used,  since  it  could  not  be 
overcome.  But  the  righteousness  can  never  cease  from  its 
conflict  against  evil  till  the  evil  ceases ; and  if  evil  never 
ceases,  then  the  conflict  must  go  on  for  ever. 

But  this  argument  must  not  be  construed  to  mean  that 
whether  men  will  or  will  not  they  must  be  saved.  Compulsory 
restoration  is  only  another  form  of  annihilation.  Freedom 
is  of  the  essence  of  man,  and  he  must  be  freely  saved  to  be 
saved  at  all.  Were  he  saved  at  the  expense  of  his  freedom,  he 


468 


NO  COMPULSORY  SALVATION. 


would  be  not  so  much  saved  as  lost.  For  the  very  seat  and 
soul  of  personality  is  will ; and  were  the  will  suspended,  espe- 
cially in  the  article  of  its  supreme  choice,  the  personality 
would  be  destroyed  ; what  resulted  would  be  not  a new  man, 
but  another  man  from  him  who  had  been  before.  And  the 
original  man  could  not  be  recalled  into  being  ; for  were  the 
old  will,  suspended  that  the  man  might  be  saved,  restored, 
the  old  state  would  be  restored  with  it.  Those  alone  can 
freely  stand  who  have  been  freely  saved  ; and  without  freedom 
there  can  be  no  obedience,  without  obedience  no  beatitude. 
Hence  the  argument  as  little  involves  universal  restoration  as 
it  allows  partial  annihilation.  What  it  maintains  is  an  eternal 
will  of  good,  and,  as  a consequence,  eternal  possibilities  of 
salvation.  God  will  never  be  reluctant,  though  man  may  for 
ever  refuse.  But  to  necessitate  were  as  little  agreeable  to  the 
regal  Paternity  as  to  annihilate.  The  Fatherhood  will  ever 
love  and  ever  seek  to  create  happiness  ; the  Sovereignty  will 
ever  govern  and  ever  seek  to  expel  sin  and  create  righteous- 
ness ; but  neither  will  ever  forget  that  the  son  is  a free  citizen, 
and  must  be  freely  won  to  submission  and  obedience.  Sin  is 
not  to  be  vanquished  either  by  the  destruction  or  the  com- 
pulsory restoration  of  the  sinner,  but  by  his  free  salvation  ; 
and  should  this  fail  of  accomplishment,  yet  God  will  have 
been  so  manifested  by  the  attempt  at  it,  that  all  the  universe 
will  feel  as  if  there  had  come  to  it  a vision  of  love  that  made 
it  taste  the  ecstasy  and  beatitude  of  the  Divine. 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  FATHERHOOD  AND  SOTERIOLOGY. 

UR  argument,  then,  has  led  us  to  this — that  God,  by 


the  ethical  necessities  of  His  nature,  becomes  the 


Saviour.  This  does  not  make  His  action  less,  but  rather 
more  gracious  and  free.  It  is  altogether  spontaneous  ; for  it 
has  all  its  motives,  though  not  all  its  ends,  within  Himself. 
He  may  be  said  to  obey  the  gentle  constraint  of  love  and  the 
imperious  demand  of  righteousness  ; but  in  this  He  is  only 
obedient  to  His  own  nature.  Yet  while  He  saves  by  inner  or 
moral  compulsion.  He  will  not  compulsorily  save.  If  man 
returns  to  God,  it  must  be  freely ; the  way  of  necessity  were 
the  way  of  death.  But  in  order  to  bring  man  freely  back, 
God  must  find  some  way  of  so  entering  his  consciousness 
as  to  overpower  and  expel  sin.  For  the  only  thing  that  can 
expel  sin  is  possession  of  God.  And  this  can  be  no  mere 
subjective  process.  More  than  the  sane  mind  is  needed  to 
restore  the  insane  to  sanity ; he  must  live  in  a sane  world, 
be  an  intelligence  to  it,  while  it  is  an  intelligible  to  him, 
for  only  as  the  reason  within  is  reconciled  with  the  order 
without  can  existence  become  reasonable.  And  so  the 
process  of  saving  means,  not  only  new  persons,  but  a new 
order,  all  things  within  and  without  made  new.  We  pass, 
therefore,  from  the  ethical  necessities  that  gpvern  the  action 
of  God  to  the  action  itself,  or  the  means  by  which  His 
ends  are  to  be  realized. 


470 


CHRIST  THE  MANIFESTED  GOD. 


§ I. — The  Incarnation. 

I.  We  have  learned  to  think  of  the  surrender  of  man  the 
sinner  as  a thing  impossible  to  God,  and  of  his  salvation  as 
a thing  possible  only  to  God  and  through  Him.  But  if  God 
is  to  save  man  by  a process  which  shall  not  destroy  but 
restore  and  perfect  his  nature,  then  the  process  must  be  one 
which  uses  the  nature,  works  upon  it  and  through  it ; in  other 
words.  He  must  reach  man  through  men,  heal  persons  by 
persons.  Yet  He  can  do  this  only  as  the  persons  are  His 
agents,  as  He  forms,  fills,  guides  them.  Their  power  to  heal 
will  depend  upon  the  degree  in  which  they  are  possessed 
of  Him,  for  they  can  communicate  only  what  they  are 
charged  with.  Now,  in  this  region  degrees  of  difference 
easily  become  differences  of  kind.  The  men  who  have  had 
manifest  commissions  from  God  to  heal  man  are  an  in- 
numerable multitude,  and  they  have  done  it  as  His  servants, 
by  virtue  of  what  they  transmitted  rather  than  what  they 
intrinsically  were.  But  Jesus  Christ  stands  here  in  an  order 
by  Himself;  though  He  appeared  as  man,  His  action  has 
been  such  as  became  the  manifested  God.  His  religious 
supremacy  is  a matter  of  personal  and  historical  experience. 
From  Him  has  come  the  God  we  know,  and  all  of  God 
that  fills  our  lives.  Were  He  removed,  our  personal  religion 
would  be  altogether  different,  and  our  consciousness  of 
God  would  lose  its  specific  character.  His  manhood  has 
this  peculiar  attribute — while  it  shows  Him  one  with  us,  it 
is  yet  to  us  the  medium  through  which  we  feel  one  with 
God.  All  it  has  effected  as  to  our  ideal  of  man  it  has  ac- 
complished through  its  action  on  our  idea  of  God,  and  our 
consciousness  of  relation  to  Him.  And  this  is  no  peculiar 
experience  ; it  is  common  to  centuries  and  to  whole  races. 
He  is  the  regnant  Head  of  the  spiritual  society  which  has 
been  the  most  efficient  agent  in  the  healing  of  man,  and 
from  Him  all  its  sense  of  divinity  and  all  its  motives  to 


THE  GODHEAD  AND  THE  INCARNATION. 


471 


beneficence  have  been  derived.  We  may  say,  then,  if  any 
one  has  acted  as  a Deity  to  the  race,  He  has  so  acted  ; and 
if  anything  in  the  life  of  His  society  was  inevitable,  it  was 
that  it  should  conceive  and  represent  Him  as  the  Divine 
yet  human  person  it  knew  Him  by  experience  to  be. 

The  Incarnation  may  be  said  to  be  the  counterpart  in 
the  field  of  history  of  the  Godhead  in  the  field  of  thought. 
Through  the  Godhead  we  conceive  Deity  as  so  existing  and 
conditioned  that  the  Incarnation  is  possible  ; through  the 
Incarnation  we  conceive  an  historical  Person  as  so  placed 
that  He  realizes  the  affinities  of  God  and  man,  and  so  con- 
stituted that  He  brings  them  into  organic  relations.  God 
conceived  as  Godhead  is  a Being  with  life  in  Himself,  com- 
municable and  ever  in  process  of  communication  ; Christ 
conceived  as  the  incarnate  Son  is  a Person  so  possessed  of 
the  communicable  life  of  God  as  to  be  the  inexhaustible 
medium  of  its  communication  to  man.  In  His  being  as 
such  a medium  two  things  are  involved — personal  unity 
(a)  with  God,  and  (/3)  with  man.  As  (a)  He  is  in  possession 
of  the  life  which  has  to  be  communicated  ; as  (/3)  He  is  a 
fit  and  capable  organ  for  its  communication.  Were  He  cut 
off  from  God,  He  could  be  no  source  of  the  life ; and  what 
life  He  transmitted  as  a channel  would  be,  because  of  His 
inadequacy,  both  quantitatively  and  qualitatively  different 
from  the  Divine.  Were  He  cut  off  from  man,  He  would 
be  no  normal  or  natural,  and  therefore  no  universal,  medium 
of  distribution.  The  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  is  the  theory 
which,  by  the  union  or  coexistence  of  the  two  natures  in  His 
Person,  explains  Plis  sufficiency  for  His  functions  as  Mediator 
and  Saviour. 

This  doctrine  may  be  said  to  consist  of  four  main  divisions 
or  questions. 

(a)  In  what  sense  was  the  Person  who  became  incarnate 
God,  and  in  what  sense  was  the  incarnate  Person  man — or 
the  doctrine  of  the  natures  ? 


472 


AFFINITIES  OF  THE  TWO  NATURES. 


(/3)  In  what  form  did  the  nature  which  assumed  humanity 
exist  prior  to  the  act  of  assumption,  and  in  what  form 
posterior  to  it — or  the  doctrine  of  the  states  ? 

(7)  Did  the  natures  involve  the  personal  unity  or  the 
duality  of  the  incarnate  Being — or  the  doctrine  of  the 
person  ? 

(S)  How  were  the  natures  as  they  coexisted  within  the 
personal  unity  related — or  the  doctrine  of  the  communicatio 
idioinatmn  ? 

It  is  impossible  to  discuss  all  these  questions  within  our 
limits  ; all  that  is  possible  is  to  explain  and  exhibit  the  idea 
of  the  Incarnation  in  the  light  of  our  determinative  principle. 

2.  It  is  as  well  frankly  to  confess  that  no  doctrine  is  more 
beset  with  difficulties,  all  of  them  grave  enough  to  appal  and 
oppress  the  most  audacious  thinker.  Yet  the  metaphysician, 
when  he  inquires  into  the  genesis  and  conditions  of  know- 
ledge, is  confronted  by  difficulties  as  many  and  as  grave. 
And  we  ought  not  to  expect  for  religious  truth  an  immunity 
which  is  granted  to  no  other.  In  no  region  of  thought  or 
inquiry  do  we  regard  intellectual  difficulty  as  a disproof 
either,  objectively,  of  truth,  or,  subjectively,  of  truthfulness  ; 
and  least  of  all  ought  we  to  do  so  in  the  realm  of  religion. 
Nay,  in  proportion  as  a doctrine  affects  and  is  affected  by 
our  deeper  problems,  we  ought  to  feel  that  it  has  a greater 
value  for  thought,  and  a more  vital  interest  for  faith.  Now, 
the  Incarnation  has  an  equal  significance  for  religion  and  for 
speculation,  though  the  significance  of  these  two  is  not  equal  ; 
and  as  regards  both  the  modern  mind  has  another  attitude 
than  the  ancient.  In  speculation  there  is  now  a clearer 
insight  into  the  affinities  of  the  Divine  and  human  natures, 
and  in  religion  a truer  perception  of  the  relation  which  the 
Fatherhood  and  Sonship  within  God  hold  to  the  being 
and  constitution  of  man  and  his  world.  The  affinities  of 
the  natures  may  be  said  to  be  the  common  principle  of 
our  higher  philosophies.  It  was  implied  in  Des  Cartes’ 


SONSHIP  A BASIS  OF  AFFINITY. 


473 


attempt  to  educe  from  the  nature  and  contents  of  his 
own  mind  the  evidence  for  the  being  of  the  Infinite ; as 
also  in  Spinoza’s  endeavour  to  resolve  the  phenomena  of 
space  and  time,  matter  and  thought,  into  the  modes  of  a 
single  substance,  which  was  at  once  a res  extensa  and  a res 
cogitans.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Malebranche’s  theory 
of  the  vision  of  all  things  in  God,  and  Berkeley’s  doctrine 
of  nature  as  a visual  language,  which  was  spoken  by  the 
creative  and  translated  by  the  created  spirit.  The  relation 
of  Kant’s  subjective  forms  and  categories  to  the  interpretation 
of  nature,  and  of  his  dialectic  to  the  transcendental  ideal, 
implies,  in  spite  of  his  own  negative  criticism,  the  corre- 
spondence or  reciprocity  of  the  interpretative  mind  with  the 
interpreted  reality.  Schelling’s  Absolute  Identity  and  Hegel’s 
Absolute  Idealism  meant  the  same  thing  ^ ; and  it  has  passed 
into  current  thought,  philosophical  and  religious,  as  the 
doctrine  of  the  Divine  immanence.  For  this  doctrine  signifies 
that  God  does  not  lose  but  rather  realizes  His  being  by  His 
immanence  in  nature  and  man,  and  man  does  not  cease  to 
be  but  rather  becomes  himself  through  the  presence  and 
operation  of  the  immanent  God.  The  natures  are  not  con- 
tradictory or  mutually  exclusive,  but  their  affinity  or  kinship 
expresses  their  reciprocal  susceptibility.  God  is,  as  it  were, 
the  eternal  possibility  of  being  incarnated,  man  the  permanent 
capability  of  incarnation. 

But  the  meaning  of  this  speculative  tendency  becomes  more 
apparent  when  taken  in  connection  with  the  religious,  which 
has  here  only  expressed  the  growing  consciousness  of  our 
determinative  idea.  Affinity  of  nature  has  its  highest  expres- 
sion in  Fatherhood  and  Sonship.  The  Creator  is  the  archetype 
even  more  than  the  architect  of  the  creation  ; the  Godhead  is, 
as  it  were,  the  idea  and  model  after  which  it  is  built.  He  who 
is  according  to  His  essence  a society,  makes  a social  universe  ; 
and  as  the  inner  society  is  constituted  by  the  co-ordinated 


^ Supi'a^  pp.  209-233. 


474  the  invisible  creates  the  visible  sonship. 

being  of  Father  and  Son,  the  outer  is  made  in  the  image  of 
the  inner.  The  ideal  is,  as  it  were,  the  uncreated  ; the  real  is 
its  expression,  its  reflection  or  shadow.  The  ideal  is  eternal, 
belongs  at  once  to  the  essence  and  the  mind  of  God,  where 
thought  and  being  are  one ; but  the  real  is  temporal,  has 
a history,  is  a form  which  expresses  the  essence  out  of 
which  it  comes.  So  the  originated  nature  is  like  the  Origi- 
nating, spirit  as  He  is  Spirit,  and  they  stand  related  according 
to  the  eternal  ideal,  which  is  yet  an  eternal  real,  as  son  and 
Father.  The  affinity  of  nature  and  the  filial  relation  are  thus 
but  two  sides  of  the  same  thing.  Man  as  God’s  kin  is  of  His 
kind,  the  differences  being  of  degree  rather  than  of  nature. 
But  this  affinity  and  relation  are  ideal,  as  conceived  and  pur- 
posed of  God — not  actual,  as  manifested  in  man  and  realized  in 
history.  In  fact  and  through  sin  God  and  man  are  ethical 
opposites,  though  in  thought  and  in  intention  they  are  related 
and  akin.  But  the  very  aim  of  the  Divine  action  is  to  overcome 
the  difference,  and  realize  the  ideal.  Hence  we  may  conclude 
from  the  affinity  of  the  natures  that  incarnation  appears  a 
possible  thing,  while  from  the  need  of  ending  their  ethical 
division  it  may  well  become  necessary. 

For,  as  we  have  already  argued,  the  filial  is  an  ethical  even 
more  than  a physical  relation.  Sonship  can  be  realized  only 
where  Fatherhood  is  known,  and  Fatherhood  can  be  known 
only  where  it  is  seen  with  all  its  qualities  in  fullest  exercise. 
The  act  of  physical  generation  constitutes  only  a nominal  or 
legal  Paternity  ; duties  of  another  and  higher  order  must  be 
fulfilled  if  a man  is  to  be  a father  indeed.  Nor  is  it  enough 
to  feed  and  clothe  the  child — the  State  can  do  that  ; or  to 
educate  him — the  school  can  do  that.  The  child  must,  as  it 
were,  daily  live  in  the  father’s  soul,  be  warmed  by  its  generous 
heat,  quickened  by  its  larger  life,  moved  and  expanded  by  its 
wiser  love.  And  if  God’s  Fatherhood  is  to  be  a reality  to 
man,  he  must  see  it  as  it  is,  know  it  by  experience,  by  handling 
it  and  being  handled  by  it.  But  the  only  way  in  which  it  can 


THE  SON,  NOT  GOD,  BECOMES  INCARNATE.  475 

thus  come  to  him  is  in  the  form  of  humanity.  He  must  see  a 
real  son,  whose  knowledge  of  the  Father  is  inner,  and  not,  like 
his  own,  outer  only.  He  must  learn  what  the  Father  is  from 
one  who  has  lived  in  His  bosom.  Even  in  so  high  a region 
personal  experience  may  illustrate  a truth.  One  of  the  things 
time  has  made  most  obvious  to  me  is  this: — that  of  all  the  human 
persons  that  have  contributed  to  the  shaping  of  the  character 
which  is  as  destiny,  the  mightiest  was  that  of  an  obscure  man 
who  died  years  before  I was  born.  But  his  daughter  was  my 
mother  ; and  the  daughter  so  loved  and  revered  the  father,  so 
remembered  his  sayings,  so  understood  his  mind,  so  believed 
the  faith  that  ruled  and  guided  him,  that  she  had  no  higher 
thought  for  her  son  than  to  make  him  such  a man  as  her 
father  had  been.  And  so,  invisible  as  he  was,  he  became  the 
real  parent  of  the  spirit  and  the  character  of  the  man  who  now 
writes  this  book.  And  if  God  is  to  become  the  real  Father  of 
man,  and  man  the  real  son  of  God,  then  all  the  energies  and 
loves  and  ideals  of  the  unseen  Paternity  must  be  incarnated 
and  organized  in  a visible  sonship,  that  they  may  become 
creative  of  a mankind  which  shall  realize  the  filial  ideal.  It 
is  through  the  one  God-man  that  the  many  become  men  of 
God.  The  nature  that  is  in  all  men  akin  to  Deity  becomes  in 
Christ  a nature  in  personal  union  with  the  Deity,  and  the 
unio  personalis,  which  is  peculiar  to  Him,  is  the  basis  of  the 
unio  mystica,  which  is  possible  to  all. 

3.  To  the  positive  construction  of  the  doctrine  we  come, 
then,  through  the  conception  of  the  Godhead  ; for  where  its 
main  difficulty  lies,  there  lies  also  its  explanation.  We  speak 
of  the  incarnation  of  God,  but  it  were  more  correct  to  speak 
of  the  incarnation  of  the  Word  or  the  Son.  Jesus  Christ 
is  neither  God  nor  the  Godhead  incarnate,  but  He  is  the 
incarnate  Son  of  God.  The  distinction  is  cardinal  ; the 
Father  did  not  become  incarnate,  nor  did  the  Holy  Spirit,  and 
so  far  forth  as  they  did  not  we  have  an  incarnation  not  of  the 
whole  Godhead,  but  only  of  the  Son.  And  the  reasons  for 


476  THE  ATTRIBUTES  AND  THE  INCARNATION. 


the  distinction  are  fundamental.  What  was  impossible  to  the 
Godhead  as  a whole  may  well  be  possible  to  the  Second 
Person.  For  the  Father  could  not  be  identified  with  man  as 
the  Son  could.  He  was  the  ideal  of  the  actual  world  ; it 
existed  in  Him  before  it  was ; He  was,  as  dependent  and 
reflexive  and  receptive,  the  symbol  of  the  created  within  the 
Uncreated  ; as  the  Object  of  eternal  love  and  Subject  of  eternal 
thought.  He  was  the  basis  of  objectivity  within  the  Godhead. 
And  so  it  was  but  fit  that  He  should  manifest  His  ideal  in  the 
forms  of  actual  being,  exhibit  under  the  conditions  of  space 
and  time  those  relations  of  the  eternal  nature  which  the 
created  natures  were  intended  to  realize.  But  in  order  to 
these  a supreme  renunciation  was  necessary ; He  had  to  stoop 
from  the  form  of  God  to  the  form  of  a servant.  This  act  is 
described  as  a kenosis^  an  emptying  of  Himself  Now,  this  is 
precisely  the  kind  of  term  we  should  expect  to  be  used  if  the 
Incarnation  was  a reality.  It  must  have  involved  surrender, 
humiliation  ; there  could  be  no  real  assumption  of  the  nature, 
the  form,  and  the  status  of  the  created  Son,  if  those  of  the  un- 
created were  in  all  their  integrity  retained.  These  two  things, 
the  surrender  and  the  assumption,  are  equal  and  coincident  ; 
but  it  is  through  the  former  that  the  latter  must  be  under- 
stood. We  may  express  what  it  means  by  saying  that  the 
Incarnation,  while  it  was  not  of  the  whole  Godhead,  only  of 
the  Son,  yet  concerned  the  Godhead  as  a whole.  And  this 
carries  with  it  an  important  consequence  : — Physical  attributes 
are  essential  to  God,  but  ethical  terms  and  relations  to  the 
Godhead.  In  other  words,  the  external  attributes  of  God  are 
omnipotence,  omniscience,  omnipresence  ; but  the  internal  are 
truth  and  love.  But  the  external  are  under  the  command  of 
the  internal ; God  acts  as  the  Godhead  is.  The  external  alone 
might  constitute  a Creator,  but  not  a Deity  ; the  internal 
would  make  out  of  a Deity  the  Creator.  Whatever,  then, 
could  be  surrendered,  the  ethical  attributes  and  qualities  could 
not ; but  God  may  only  seem  the  more  Godlike  if,  in  obedience 


TPIE  INCARNATION  NO  ACCIDENT 


477 


to  the  ethical,  He  limit  or  restrain  or  veil  the  physical.  We 
reverence  Him  the  more  that  we  think  the  annihilation  so 
easy  to  His  omnipotence  is  made  impossible  by  His  love.  No 
such  impossibilities  would  be  known  to  an  almighty  devil ; 
he  would  glory  in  destruction  as  much  as  God  glories  in 
salvation.  We  may  say,  then,  that  what  marks  the  whole  life 
of  Deity  is  the  regulation  of  His  physical  by  His  ethical  attri- 
butes, or  the  limitation  of  God  by  the  Godhead.  But  this 
same  principle  supplies  us  with  a factor  for  the  solution  of  our 
problem.  The  salvation  of  the  sinner  was  a moral  necessity 
to  the  Godhead  ; but  no  such  necessity  demanded  that  each 
of  the  Divine  Persons  should  every  moment  exercise  all  the 
physical  attributes  of  God.  And  this  surrender  the  Son  made 
when  He  emptied  Himself  and  assumed  the  form  of  a servant, 
and  was  made  in  the  likeness  of  man.  The  determinative 
Divine  qualities  were  obeyed,  and  the  determined  limited  ; yet 
it  was,  as  it  were,  the  renunciation  of  the  less  in  order  to  the 
realization  of  the  more  Godlike  qualities.  “ The  Word  became 
flesh,  and  dwelt  among  us  ” ; but  we  only  the  more  “ beheld 
His  glory,  glory  as  of  the  Only  Begotten  from  the  Father,  full 
of  grace  and  truth.”  ^ 

So  conceived,  then,  the  Incarnation  may  be  described  as  the 
most  illustrious  example  of  the  supremacy  of  God’s  moral 
over  His  physical  attributes,  and  of  the  relation  they  hold  to 
the  healing  and  the  happiness  of  man.  As  such  it  is  of  all  acts 
the  act  that  most  becomes  Him,  and  so  the  one  we  can  least 
conceive  as  accidental.  And  therefore,  though  its  special  form 
may  be  affected  by  the  fact  of  sin,  yet  it  were  mere  imperti- 
nence to  imagine  that  but  for  the  accident  of  sin,  the  universe 
would  have  been  deprived  of  its  most  invincible  evidence  of 
grace.  Luther,  in  his  picturesque  way,  has  said,  that  Lucifer, 
while  a good  angel,  saw  in  the  very  countenance  of  God  that 
He  had  from  eternity  determined  to  become  a man,  to  assume 
in  time  the  nature  of  men,  not  of  angels  ; and  hence  came  the 

* John  i.  14. 


478  “SEINE  EHRE  1ST  SEINE  LIEBE.” 

envy  that  caused  his  falld  But  those  who  see  the  prophecy 
fulfilled,  feel  that  there  is  nothing  so  majestic  as  the  condescen- 
sion of  God.  For  as  Luther  has  also  said,  “ seine  Ehre  ist  seine 
Liebe  ” ; and  His  honour  is  so  His  love  that  the  humiliation 
to  which  His  love  constrained  most  awakens  our  wonder  and 
our  praise.  And  this  exaltation  through  His  moral  attributes 
has  not  lessened  our  sense  for  His  physical.  These  the  Incar- 
nation does  not,  any  more  than  external  nature,  so  limit  as  to 
conceal.  Between  them  there  is  nothing  on  this  point  that 
deserves  to  be  called  radical  difference.  The  physical  universe 
circumscribes  the  ubiquity  of  God  ; the  divisions  of  time 
annul  for  us  His  eternity.  There  is,  in  truth,  no  difficulty 
involved  in  His  union  with  human  nature  that  is  not  equally 
involved  in  His  relation  to  material  nature,  which,  however 
vast,  is  not  so  near  the  Infinite  as  man,  and,  however  old,  has 
not  so  much  of  eternity  within  it  as  his  mind.  The  relation 
must  indeed  assume  different  forms,  because  the  terms  related 
are  different.  There  can  be  no  personal  union  with  material 
nature,  for  it  knows  no  personality ; but  with  human  nature, 
which  must  be  personal  to  be,  the  union  which  does  not 
become  personal  is  not  absolutely  real.  While,  then,  the 
Incarnation  does  no  more  violence  to  the  physical  attributes 
of  God  than  creation  does,  it  yet  so  exalts  and  glorifies 
His  moral  qualities  and  character  that  in  its  presence  the 
voices  of  nature  may  be  said  to  lose  their  music  or  die  into 
silence. 

4.  The  argument,  so  far  as  it  has  proceeded,  has  been 
governed  by  the  determinative  idea  of  God  as  interpreted  in 
Christ.  But  as  to  Christ  Himself  as  the  incarnate  Person  little 
has  been  said,  though  much  has  been  implied.  The  person, 
to  be  real,  must  be  a unity,  for  two  wills  or  minds  were  two 
persons.  But  the  natures,  if  He  is  to  be  qualified  for  His  work, 
must  be  distinct.  Only  their  integrity  must  not  be  developed 
into  antagonism  or  incompatibility.  The  union  within  the 
1 Opera,  vii.,  pp.  1544-1555  (Walch). 


INCARNATION  AND  THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST.  479 

Person  is  not  a work  of  mere  omnipotence,  but  expresses  a 
real  affinity,  ethically  mediated,  though  personally  realized. 
And  the  natures  in  their  union  condition  each  other  ; because 
of  their  kinship  a real  and  reciprocal  communicatio  idiomatum 
is  possible.  Hence  by  its  union  with  the  Deity  the  humanity 
is  not  superseded  or  diminished,  but  rather  exercised,  realized, 
and  enlarged  ; and  by  its  union  with  the  humanity  the  Deity 
is  not  discharged  or  lessened,  but  rather  actualized,  personalized, 
made  articulate.  For  the  work  designed  the  manhood  was 
capable  of  receiving  the  Godhood,  and  the  Godhood  was 
capable  of  personal  union  with  the  manhood.  The  perfection 
of  the  humanity,  while  realized  in  time,  expressed  what  was 
of  eternity, — the  perfection  of  the  Godhood,  not  the  physical 
attributes  which  belonged  to  the  Creator,  but  the  inner* 
qualities,  the  hidden  loves  and  energies  which  were,  as  we  have 
said,  the  God  of  God.  And  so  He  was,  in  a sense,  a double 
incarnation — of  manhood  and  Godhood.  In  Him  humanity 
was  realized  before  God  and  revealed  to  man  ; in  Him  God 
was  revealed  to  man  by  Godhood  being  realized  before  him. 
The  unity  of  His  person  symbolized  His  work  as  a unity  ; 
to  participate  in  His  manhood  is  to  become  a “ partaker  of 
the  Divine  nature,”^  “heirs  of  God,  and  joint-heirs  with 
Christ.’’ 2 


§ II. — The  Atonement. 

But  the  Incarnation  had  a function,  and  so  we  must  ask, 
Cur  Deus  Homo  ? 

I.  Whatever  its  function  might  have  been  in  a sinless  world,  ' 
its  purpose  in  ours  was  to  save  the  soul  from  personal  and 
the  race  from  collective  sin.  In  attempting  to  represent  how 
it  was  made  to  do  this,  we  must  be  careful  to  maintain  its 
true  relation  to  God.  If  He  is  the  unity  of  Fatherhood  and 
Sovereignty,  law  is  not  something  that  can  be  separated  from 

^ 2 Peter  i.  4.  ^ Rom.  viii.  17. 


480 


LAW,  ROMAN  AND  HEBREW. 


Him,  and  conceived  as  a sort  of  independent  entity,  with 
claims  enforced  upon  the  sinner  by  sanctions  and  needing  to  be 
satisfied  by  penalties.  The  idea  of  law  in  the  New  Testament 
has  very  little  in  common  with  the  idea  of  law  in  our  juridical 
theologies.  The  Roman  lex  was  not  the  synonym  of  the 
Greek  i^o/xo9,  especially  when  used  to  translate  the  Hebrew 
torah.  Into  lex  whole  systems  of  jurisprudence  were  packed  ; 
it  raised  the  image  of  the  Ccesar  who  was  its  source,  the  judex 
who  was  its  interpreter,  the  procurator  who  was  its  guardian, 
the  lictors  with  their  fasces,  and  all  the  apparltores  who 
waited  to  be  the  agents  and  instruments  of  justice,  when 
engaged  in  its  noble  but  often  hard  and  painful  work  of 
vindicating  authority.  But  to  a Jew  who,  though  he  used 
Greek,  thought  in  Hebrew,  voybo^  had  other  and  larger  associa- 
tions. It  was  primarily  instruction,  a method  of  discipline 
through  the  truth  and  ordinances  given  of  God,  received  and 
revealed  by  prophets  and  priests,  written  in  the  sacred  books, 
explained,  transmitted,  and  enlarged  in  the  schools,  read  in 
the  synagogue,  observed  in  the  Temple,  incorporated  in 
the  religion.  When  a Roman  jurist,  even  though  he  had 
become  a Christian  Father,  thought  of  law,  it  was  as  known 
in  the  schools  where  he  had  studied  and  in  the  courts  where 
he  had  practised ; all  its  associations  were  judicial,  all  its 
processes  forensic,  all  its  judgments  aimed  at  the  suppression 
of  crime  and  the  satisfaction  of  justice  by  penalties.  But 
when  a Jewish  scholar  who  had  become  a Christian  Apostle 
thought  of  law,  it  was  as  the  moral  and  ceremonial,  the  social 
and  sacerdotal  system  in  which  he  had  been  instructed  as 
a religion  and  as  the  peculiar  revelation*  granted  to  his  people. 
There  were  points  indeed  where  the  ideas  touched  ; but  these 
were  incidental,  while  the  points  where  they  differed  were 
essential.  Hence  if  a man  reads  the  Pauline  vbyio^  as  if  it 
were  Roman  and  magisterial  lex,  he  will  radically  misread  it, 
espeeially  in  all  that  concerns  its  relation  to  the  death  of 
Christ.  “ Christ  hath  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of  the 


MAN  SAVED.  BUT  HIS  SIN  JUDGED. 


481 


law  ” ^ ; certainly,  but  this  was  the  law  which  the  Jew  loved, 
and  which  was  thus  for  ever  abolished,  not  the  universal  law 
of  God.  He  became  “a  curse  for  us”;  certainly,  but  under 
the  same  law,  for  by  it  He  was  ‘‘  hanged  upon  a tree.” 
But  the  law  that  thus  judged  Him  condemned  itself ; by 
cursing  Him  it  became  accursed.  His  death  was  not  the 
vindication,  but  the  condemnation  of  the  law.  And  this  is 
the  characteristic  attitude  of  the  New  Testament  writers. 
The  law  which  Christ  at  once  fulfilled  and  abolished  was  not 
the  law  of  the  judge  and  jurist,  but  the  law  of  the  rabbi 
and  the  priest,  the  law  of  ceremonial  and  service,  of  works 
and  worship,  of  prophecy  and  type.  The  language  which 
describes  His  relation  to  it  and  its  to  Him  cannot  be  used 
to  describe  His  relation  to  the  absolute  law  or  righteousness 
of  God.  This  relation  we  must  interpret  through  our  idea  of 
God,  not  through  our  very  mixed  notions  of  law  and  justice. 

But  this  juridical  theory  gives  us  a point  from  which  our 
discussion  may  start : — The  first  step  in  the  process  of  saving 
from  sin  is  to  execute  judgment  upon  it,  and  so  to  do  it  that 
the  judgment,  though  God’s,  shall  also  become,  as  it  were,  the 
sinner’s  own.  There  is  not  room  for  two  absolute  wills — one 
God’s,  another  the  man’s ; one  must  reign,  if  action  and 
character,  conduct  and  being,  are  to  coalesce  in  beatitude.  A.s; 
is  the  nature,  so  is  the  will  ; the  only  absolutely  good  will  is 
the  will  of  the  nature  absolutely  good.  Hence  the  supremacy 
of  God’s  will  is  the  supremacy  of  good,  the  union  of  a holy  Being 
with  a happy  state  ; while  the  supremacy  of  man’s  were  but 
the  tumult  of  an  infinite  multitude  of  colliding  atoms,  each 
charged  with  selfish  passions  and  seeking  to  live  by  the 
destruction  of  its  rivals.  Salvation,  then,  can  come  only  by 
sin  being  vanquished,  by  the  surrender  of  the  sinner  to  God, 
not  of  God  to  sin. 

This  judgment  of  sin  is  a necessity.  For  sin  is  not  a fact 
which  an  act  of  oblivion  can  annihilate  ; facts  are  not  capable 

^ Gal.  iii.  13. 


31 


482  THE  ATONEMENT  EXPRESSES  THE  JUDGMENT 

of  annihilation,  especially  when  they  are  evil  deeds  that 
have  by  recognition  and  confession  been  committed  to  the 
keeping  of  two  memories  and  two  consciences,  one  accusing, 
the  other  accused.  And  so  forgiveness  cannot  make  a sinner 
feel  or  be  as  if  he  had  never  sinned  ; he  cannot  so  stand  in 
his  own  eye,  or  believe  that  he  shall  ever  so  stand  in  the 
eye  of  God.  And  strangely  yet  justly  enough,  it  is  less 
easy  to  forget  an  un judged  than  a judged  sin.  We  are 
forced  ever  to  remember  what  we  have  never  confessed  or 
been  called  to  account  for.  We  live  in  fear  lest  the  slumbering 
justice  we  have  hitherto  eluded  should  awake  and  exact  ten- 
fold penalties  for  the  silence  added  to  our  sin.  And  this  is 
only  one  side  of  the  necessity  for  judgment.  That  could  not 
be  a grave  evil  which  the  Author  of  all  good  was  willing  to 
pass  lightly  over.  What  it  cost  God  no  pain  to  forgive,  it 
would  cost  man  no  pain  to  repeat.  Hence,  if  man  s relation 
to  sin  is  to  be  changed,  if  the  guilty  is  to  be  forgiven,  it 
must  be  on  terms  that  leave  him  in  no  doubt  as  to  the 
nature  and  desert  of  his  sin.  And  so  if  God  saves  man,  it 
is  certain  that  His  method  will  be  so  to  judge  sin  as  to 
condemn  and  overcome  it  more  completely  than  would  have 
been  possible  by  any  judicial  process  or  any  system  of  cumu- 
lative penalties. 

But  in  order  to  understand  how  this  may  be  we  must 
recall  the  true  nature  and  end  of  His  judgments  : they  are 
not  merely  retributory  or  retaliatory,  penal  or  vindictive,  in 
the  judicial  sense,  but  they  are  corrective,  reclamatory,  dis- 
ciplinary. While  they  vindicate  authority,  they  are  intended 
to  be  not  simply  deterrent  and  exemplary,  but  reformatory 
and  restorative.  This  affects  the  function  of  the  Atonement ; 
it  works  in  the  universe  as  the  manifest  and  embodied  judg- 
ment of  God  against  sin,  but  of  this  judgment  as  chastening 
and  regenerative  rather  than  juridical  and  penal.  It  is  designed 
to  create  in  man  all  the  effects  of  corrective  and  remedial 
sufferings,  to  do  the  work  of  restorative  and  reformatory 


AND  ALSO  THE  PASSIBIUTY  OF  GOD. 


483 


penalties,  only  it  accomplishes  this  in  a more  efficient  mode 
than  could  the  sufferings  themselves.  It  burns  into  the  soul 
of  the  sinner  the  sense  of  the  evil  and  the  shame  of  sin, 
forces  him  to  look  at  it  with  God’s  eyes,  to  judge  it  with 
His  conscience,  to  hate  it  with  His  hate — in  a word,  to 
change  his  own  attitude  to  it  for  God’s.  And  when  this 
is  the  case  the  sinner  is  saved,  but  so  saved  that  his  salva- 
tion is  the  supreme  victory  of  righteousness  and  sovereignty 
as  well  as  of  love  and  grace.  The  Atonement  may  therefore 
be  described  as  the  method  by  which  God  has  so  judged 
sin  in  the  very  home  of  the  sinful  as  to  achieve  the  salvation 
of  the  sinner. 

2.  In  what  measure,  now,  was  the  Incarnation,  with  the 
passion  and  death  it  involved,  calculated  to  fulfil  this  func- 
tion, or  accomplish  these  ends  ? We  have  to  remember 
that  it  is  to  us  the  externalization  of  what  was  innermost 
in  God,  the  secret  of  the  eternal  manifested  in  time.  From 
it,  therefore,  comes,  first,  the  complete  revelation  of  God. 
God  as  He  is  in  Himself  and  to  Himself  stood  disclosed 
to  man  ; and  man  knew  what  he  had  forsaken  and  sur- 
rendered for  sin.  The  Creator  and  Ruler  of  the  universe 
now  lived  to  faith  as  the  Father,  the  home  of  all  the  most 
gracious  energies  and  ends.  Secondly,  His  attitude  to  man 
was  revealed — His  love  of  him,  purposes  concerning  him. 
His  mercy  and  truth.  And  as  was  His  attitude  to  man, 
such  was  His  attitude  to  sin.  He  could  not  love  it,  nay. 
He  hated  it,  and  it  was,  as  it  were,  the  sorrow  in  the 
heart  of  His  happiness.  Theology  has  no  falser  idea  than 
that  of  the  impassibility  of  God.  If  He  is  capable  of 
sorrow.  He  is  capable  of  suffering  ; and  were  He  without 
the  capacity  for  either.  He  would  be  without  any  feeling 
of  the  evil  of  sin  or  the  misery  of  man.  The  very  truth 
that  came  by  Jesus  Christ  may  be  said  to  be  summed  up 
in  the  passibility  of  God.  But,  thirdly,  to  be  passible  is 
to  be  capable  of  sacrifice  ; and  in  the  presence  of  sin  the 


484  the  invisible  sacrifice  is  the  father’s, 


capability  could  not  but  become  the  reality.  To  confine 
the  idea  of  sacrifice  to  the  Son  is  to  be  unjust  to  His 
representation  of  the  Father.  There  is  a sense  in  which 
the  Patripassian  theory  is  right  ; the  Father  did  suffer,  though 
it  was  not  as  the  Son  that  He  suffered,  but  in  modes  distinct 
and  different.  The  being  of  evil  in  the  universe  was  to  His 
moral  nature  an  offence  and  a pain,  and  through  His  pity 
the  misery  of  man  became  His  sorrow.  But  this  sense  of 
man’s  evil  and  misery  ^ became  the  impulse  to  speak  and 
to  help ; and  what  did  this  mean  but  the  disclosure  of  His 
suffering  by  the  surrender  of  the  Son  ? But  this  surrender, 
as  it  was  the  act,  represented  the  sacrifice  and  the  passion 
of  the  whole  Godhead.  Here  degree  and  proportion  are 
out  of  place  ; were  it  not,  we  might  say  the  Father  suffered 
more  in  giving  than  the  Son  in  being  given.  He  who  gave 
to  duty  had  not  the  reward  of  Him  who  rejoiced  to  do  it. 
Though  we  speak  but  in  the  limited  language  of  our  own 
conditions,  yet,  may  we  not  ask,  must  not  the  act  by  which 
the  Son  emptied  Himself  have  affected  and,  as  it  were, 
impoverished  the  Godhead  ? The  two  things  are  coincident 
and  inseparable ; here,  pre-eminently,  one  member  could  not 
suffer  without  all  suffering.  The  humiliation  of  the  Son 
involved  the  visible  passion  and  death,  but  the  surrender 
by  the  Father  involved  the  sorrow  that  was  the  invisible 
sacrifice. 

And  this  is  the  Biblical  doctrine.  “ God  so  loved  the  world 
that  He  gave  His  only-begotten  Son  “ He  spared  not  His 
own  Son,  but  delivered  Him  up  for  us  all”^;  “ Herein  is  love, 
not  that  we  loved  God,  but  that  He  loved  us,  and  sent  His 
Son  to  be  the  propitiation  for  our  sins.”  ^ But  what  do  these 
verses  mean,  if  not  that  the  essence  and  act  of  sacrifice  was 
the  surrender  of  the  Son  by  the  Father  ? It  was  the  measure 
alike  of  His  love  to  man  and  the  suffering  He  endured  to 
save.  And  so  we  may  say,  without  the  F'atherhood  there 

* John  iii.  16.  ^ Rom.  viii.  32.  ® i John  iv.  10. 


THE  VISIBLE  HUMILIATION  THE  SON’S. 


485 


could  be  no  Atoner  and  no  Atonement  ; but  with  the  Father- 
hood the  Atoner  and  the  Atonement  could  not  but  be.  By 
their  means  He,  as  it  were,  invited  man  to  come  and  see  sin 
as  He  saw  it,  and  judge  its  evil  by  beholding  through  the 
eternal  Son  the  suffering  it  cost  the  eternal  Father.* 

We  may,  then,  construe  the  sufferings  and  death  of  Christ 
as  if  they  were  the  sacraments,  or  symbols  and  seals,  of  the 
invisible  passion  and  sacrifice  of  the  Godhead.  That  is  a 
message  they  deliver  now  and  will  deliver  for  ever  ; but  it  is  not 
their  only  message.  They  are  a revelation  of  sin  as  well  as  of 
God  ; they  show  it  as  nothing  else  could  have  done.  And 
revelation  is  here  judgment  ; for  sin  to  be  discovered  is  to  be 
condemned.  In  Christ  love  and  righteousness  were  incarnate  : 
though  hated.  He  always  loved  ; though  wronged.  He  always 
obeyed.  In  Him  there  was  nothing  akin  to  evil,  or  anything 
that  sin  could  call  its  own.  But  this  only  made  two  things 
the  more  manifest — the  hatefulness  of  sin  to  the  good,  and 
the  hate  of  sin  for  the  good.  In  the  very  degree  that  Christ’s 
soul  was  pure  He  was  sensitive  to  the  shame  of  evil  ; its  very 
shadow  was  to  Him  misery ; and  it  is  a thing  man  cannot 
forget  that  the  Sinless  bears  as  His  distinguishing  name  “ the 
Man  of  Sorrows.”  But  this  purity  of  His  was  the  very  thing 
sin  could  not  forgive;  it  saw  Him  only  to  feel,  “Here  is  a 
sacrifice  I must  offer.”  And  it  offered  Him,  without  shame 
on  its  own  part,  but  with  such  feeling  and  shrinking  on  His 
that  He  prayed,  “ Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass.” 
But  it  could  not  be  allowed  to  pass,  for  it  was  necessary  to 
the  saving  of  man  that  the  inmost  essence  of  sin  should  be 
revealed.  And  so,  with  the  sanction  and  by  the  act  of  those 
who  by  misrepresenting  religion  most  represented  sin.  He 
was  sacrificed.  The  place  was  the  holy  city  ; the  time  was 
the  morrow  of  the  great  feast  ; the  celebrants  were  the 
priests  headed  by  their  chief ; the  spectators  who  approved 
were  the  people  gathered  for  the  festival.  And  so  they 
crucified  Him,  making  Him  an  offering  and  a sacrifice.  In 


486 


THE  ATONEMENT  DOES  THE  WORK 


His  soul  He  carried  the  sins  of  men,  and  for  their  sins 
He  died. 

And  from  His  death  two  most  dissimilar  yet  related  results 
have  followed — a new  consciousness  of  God,  and  a new  con- 
sciousness of  sin.  We  have  argued  that  the  sense  of  sin  is  a 
creation  of  Christianity,  and  we  may  now  add,  the  creative 
factor  was  the  death  of  Christ.  But  does  not  this  mean  that  it 
has  achieved  the  purpose  of  God,  and  so  expressed  His  judg- 
ment against  sin  that  man  is  slowly  becoming  possessed  by 
that  judgment,  making  it  his  own  ? Beforehand  the  means 
might  well  have  been  judged  unsuitable  to  the  end  ; but  their 
suitability  is  the  very  thing  that  the  process  of  time  is  making 
most  apparent. 

3.  In  the  Atonement  so  construed  many  principles  are  im- 
plied that  cannot  be  here  made  explicit.  But  we  note  a few. 

i.  As  God  is  its  cause  and  the  Incarnation  its  organ  or 
medium,  it  derives  from  the  one  all  its  validity,  from  the  other 
all  its  reality  and  adaptation  to  its  end.  What  owes  its  being 
to  God  must  be  well-pleasing  to  Him  ; what  is  done  by  One 
who  represents  both  God  and  man  must  be  relevant  to  both. 

ii.  As  the  work  of  One  so  constituted  and  representative 
of  God  and  man,  it  is  in  nature  substitutionary — so  does 
the  work  of  the  penal  yet  corrective  judgments  of  God  as  to 
create  the  very  sense  of  sin  and  attitude  to  it  that  they  aim 
at.  In  those  who  thus  feel  its  action  it  has  accomplished  all 
the  ends  of  the  chastisement  that  at  once  vindicates  His  autho- 
rity and  seeks  our  correction.  God  has  made  us  to  know  sin 
by  making  Him  who  knew  no  sin  to  be  sin  for  us.^ 

iii.  The  Atonement  has  satisfied  both  the  love  and  the 
righteousness  of  God, — His  love,  by  being  a way  for  the 
recovery  and  salvation  of  man  ; His  righteousness,  by  van- 
quishing sin  within  the  sinner  and  vindicating  the  authority  of 
the  eternal  Will.  By  setting  forth  Christ  Jesus  as  propitiatory, 
through  faith  in  His  blood,  God  has  shown  forth  His  right- 


^ 2 Cor.  V.  21, 


OF  PENAL  YET  CORRECTIVE  JUSTICE.  487 

eousness  in  the  remission  of  sins,  and  proved  Himself  “just, 
while  the  justiher  of  him  who  is  of  the  faith  of  Jesus.”  ^ 

iv.  The  ends  of  God  in  the  Atonement  are  those  of  the  regal 
Paternity — the  creation  of  an  obedient  and  a happy  universe. 
If  these  ends  are  represented  as  the  glory  of  God,  it  means 
that  the  one  thing  which  can  glorify  a good  God  is  the  good 
of  His  creatures  ; if  as  the  salvation^  of  man,  it  means  that 
the  happiness  of  the  universe  is  the  beatitude  of  the  Creator. 
The  Atonement  is,  therefore,  the  creation  of  grace — does  not 
create  it. 

V.  Christ,  as  the  Head,  is  the  basis  and  symbol  of  a new 
mankind,  and  so  of  a new  order  or  law  for  humanity.  His 
obedience,  as  racial  while  personal,  is  the  cause  of  a collective 
righteousness  which  cancels  for  the  irresponsible  and  guiltless 
the  evil  of  collective  sin.  But  as  regards  the  guilty  and  re- 
sponsible, it  makes  the  salvation  of  no  man  actual,  but  of  all 
men  possible,  dependent  on  conditions  that  men  must  fulfil. 
The  righteousness  which  is  without  works  is  not  without 
faith  ; and  so  the  possible  salvation  is  realized  by  him  who 
believeth.  Hence,  even  under  it,  man  remains  free,  respon- 
sible, saved  by  grace,  but  through  faith. 

vi.  This  Atonement,  in  the  degree  that  it  exhibits  God  as 
a Being  who  does  not  need  to  be  appeased  or  moved  to 
mercy,  but  who  suffers  unto  sacrifice  that  He  may  save, 
must  have  exalted  in  the  eyes  of  all  created  intelligences 
His  character  and  majesty.  And  the  higher  the  character 
of  God  appears,  the  greater  the  happiness  of  the  universe. 
And  so  we  may  say,  the  work  of  Christ  has  modified  for  the 
better  the  state  of  all  created  being — nay,  even  of  the  lost. 

§ HI.— The  Holy  Spirit. 

But  God  as  here  conceived  is  not  a being  whose  spiritual 
and  remedial  activities  can  be  limited  to  a particular 
time  or  special  appearance ; they  must  be  universal  and 
^ Rom.  iii.  25,  26. 


488 


GOD  THE  EFFICIENT  CAUSE  OF  GOOD. 


continuous.  Occasional  action  is  only  a form  of  inefficiency  ; 
permanent  energy  is  needed  for  effectual  work.  And  in 
religion  God  must  always  remain  the  efficient  cause,  ini- 
tiating all  the  good  man  ever  receives.  Were  man  here 
the  only  active  or  causal  person,  he  would  very  soon  cease 
to  be  religious.  If  all  his  prayers  were  addressed  to  an 
impotent  abstraction  or  an  impersonal  universe  which  has 
mechanically  evolved  a being  that  can  know  it,  but  it  can 
never  know,  he  would  soon  tire  of  speaking  into  a void 
that  could  not  even  echo  the  voice  of  his  reason.  Mind 
feels  oppressed  by  the  infinities  of  space  and  time.  When 
we  think  of  the  immensity  in  which  we  float,  the  spaces 
between  star  and  star  that  fleet  fancy  grows  weary  in 
trying  to  traverse,  or  the  worlds  massed  by  distance  into 
constellations,  we  feel  with  Kant  that,  like  the  moral  law 
within,  the  starry  heaven  above  fills  us  with  admiration 
and  awe.  When  we  think  of  the  eternity  behind,  which 
mind  cannot  measure  because  thought  cannot  limit,  in  whose 
presence  the  age  of  the  oldest  planet  is  only  as  the  life  of 
the  fretful  midge  to  the  course  of  creation,  we  feel  lost 
like  one  who,  though  he  looks  before  and  after,  can  discover 
no  limit  or  end  on  which  the  eye  can  rest.  But  while 
these  Infinities  may  awe  and  oppress,  they  cannot  evoke 
or  receive  worship,  or  move  man  to  religion.  In  it  God 
must  speak  as  well  as  man,  and  our  appeal  to  Him  is  but 
the  echo  of  His  appeal  to  us.  The  atom  is  only  a form 
of  the  Divine  energy,  and  religion  a mode  of  the  Divine 
presence.  God  as  power  is  immanent  in  nature,  as  spirit 
is  immanent  in  man  ; and  without  the  action  of  His  im- 
manence the  Incarnation  would  be  but  an  isolated  inter- 
vention, marvellous  as  a detached  miracle,  but  without 
universal  or  permanent  influence. 

Now,  what  does  the  Spirit  mean  to  Christ?  The  Baptist 
predicted  that  He  should  “ baptize  in  the  Holy  Spirit.”  ^ At 
^ Matt.  iii.  ii  ; Luke  iii.  i6. 


THE  SPIRIT  AND  THE  CHRIST. 


489 


the  Baptism  the  Holy  Spirit  descended  upon  Him  like  a dove.^ 
Full  of  the  Holy  Spirit  He  returns  from  the  Baptism,  and 
is  by  the  Spirit  led  into  the  wilderness  to  be  tempted.^  In 
the  power  of  the  Spirit  He  returned  into  Galilee,  and  began 
His  work  by  reading,  “ The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  Me.”^ 
The  only  consecration  He  ever  had  was  the  anointing  of 
the  Holy  Spirit.'^  By  the  Spirit  of  God  He  cast  out  devils, 
and  did  His  mighty  works.^  He  was,  then,  so  possessed  of 
the  Spirit  that  they  may  be  described  as  co-efficient  energies, 
or  co-essential  persons ; neither  could  without  the  other  be 
what  He  is,  or  accomplish  what  He  does.  For  the  correlation 
means  a mutual  and  common  necessity;  Jesus  without  the 
Spirit  would  not  have  been  the  Anointed,  the  Christ,  and 
without  Christ  the  Spirit  would  be  without  His  peculiar 
function  and  work.  Hence  comes  the  extraordinary  place 
the  Spirit  occupies  in  the  mind  both  of  Jesus  and  His 
Apostles.  He  is  the  Comforter,  the  Holy  Spirit,  who  pro- 
ceedeth  from  the  Father,  but  is  sent  by  the  Son,  and 
bears  witness  concerning  Him.®  He  is  the  Spirit  of  Truth 
who  shall  come  when  the  Master  leaves,  teach  all  things, 
convict  the  world  in  respect  of  sin  and  righteousness  and 
judgment,  glorify  Christ,  and  abide  with  His  people  for 
ever.^  This  Spirit  God  gives  without  measure.^  Christ,  too, 
breathed  on  His  disciples  and  said,  “Receive  ye  the  Holy 
Spirit.”®  He  promised  that  they  should  be  baptized  in  the 
Holy  Spirit ; at  His  coming  they  were  to  receive  power 
and  they  were  to  speak  in  His  name  and  as  He  taught.^® 
As  with  Christ,  so  with  His  people  or  Church  ; they  live,  move, 

^ Luke  iii.  22  ; Matt.  iii.  16.  ® John  xv.  26. 

- Luke  iv.  I ; Matt.  iv.  I,  ^ John  xiv.  16,  17,  26,  xvi.  7,  13,  14. 

^ Luke  iv.  14,  18.  ® John  iii.  34. 

* Acts  X.  38.  \ ® John  XX.  22. 

® Matt.  xii.  28. 

Acts  i.  5,  8 ; Luke  xii.  12.  But  see  on  subject  of  this  paragraph 
the  suggestive  discussion  of  Professor  Milligan,  “ The  Heavenly  Priesthood 
of  our  Lord,”  Lee.  iv. 


490 


THE  APOSTLES  AND  THE  FATHERS. 


and  are  through  the  Holy  Spirit,  yet  the  Spirit  distilled,  as  it 
were,  through  the  Son. 

In  this  sense  the  teaching  of  the  Master  was  repeated  by 
the  disciples  ; theirs  was  the  dispensation  and  ministration  of 
the  Spirit,  His  the  Word  they  preached  and  the  invitation  they 
gave  ; He  sealed  and  sanctified  their  converts,  and  they  were 
baptized  and  blessed  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and 
the  Holy  Spirit.^  His  work  was  as  great  and  as  necessary, 
and  expressed  attributes  as  divine,  as  those  of  the  Father  and 
Son — ubiquity,  holiness,  truth,  infinite  energy  ever  exercised 
and  ever  resultful.  But  the  Fathers  were  slow  in  discovering 
what  the  Apostles  had  so  clearly  seen.  In  this  point, 
as  in  so  many  others,  though  perhaps  in  this  point  most  of 
all,  the  gap  between  the  New  Testament  and  the  first  three 
centuries  of  patristic  literature  is  such  as  no  theory  of  develop- 
ment can  bridge.  It  is  true  that  in  acts  and  formulae  of 
worship,  in  doxologies  and  simple  confessions  of  faith,  the 
Holy  Spirit  took  His  place  beside  the  Father  and  the  Son  ; 
but  touching  His  person  and  work  confusion  reigned  till 
late  in  the  fourth  century,  and  did  not  by  any  means  even 
then  cease.  What  became  evident  was  this — salvation,  to 
be  real,  must  be  altogether  of  God,  its  cause  a unity. 
And  so  Athanasius  argued,  that  He  who  sanctifies  all  must 
be  sanctified  by  His  own  nature  ; Basil,  that  He  who  renews 
could  not  be  inferior  to  Him  who  saved ; Gregory  of  Nyssa, 
that  He  who  revealed  the  truth  must  possess  the  truth  He 
revealed  ; Gregory  of  Nazianzus  that  the  attributes  ascribed 
to  the  Spirit  were  as  divine  as  those  of  the  Father  or  the 
Son.  And  so  the  mind  ecclesiastical  came  to  formulate  its 
belief  in  “the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  life,  who 
proceedeth  from  the  Father,  and  who  with  the  Father  and 
the  Son  together  is  worshipped  and  glorified.”® 

^ 2 Cor.  iii.  8,  17  ; Acts  viii.  15,  17,  19,  x.  19,  44,  xi.  24,  xiii.  2,  4,  9;  i Cor. 
ii.  4,  5,  10,  xii.  3 ; 2 Cor.  vi.  6 ; Eph.  iv.  30 ; 2 Thess.  ii.  13  ; i Peter  i.  2 ; 
Matt,  xxviii.  19  ; 2 Cor.  xiii.  14.  ^ “ Nicaeno-Const.  Symbol.” 


THE  THREEFOLD  DIVINE  CAUSALITY. 


491 


In  salvation,  then,  there  is  a threefold  Divine  causality — 
the  Father  who  gives,  the  Son  who  is  given,  the  Holy  Spirit 
who  renews  and  reveals.  And  these  are  so  united  as  to 
be  inseparable  in  essence  and  in  act.  The  Father  is  the 
fount,  the  Son  the  medium,  the  Spirit  the  distributor  of 
grace.  The  Father  is  known,  because  He  is  manifested  in 
the  Son  ; the  work  of  the  Son  is  a sacrifice,  because  He  is 
delivered  of  the  Father  ; and  the  Spirit  is  now  the  Spirit 
of  the  Son,  and  now  the  Spirit  of  God.  It  is  the  unity  of 
the  whole  that  constitutes  the  efficiency  of  each,  yet  the 
difference  is  as  suggestive  as  the  unity.  While  the  Son 
enables  us  to  understand  the  being  and  action  of  personality 
within  the  Godhead,  the  Spirit  enables  us  to  conceive  its 
being  and  action  without.  There  is  an  immanent  presence 
of  God  in  man,  but  it  represents  personal  agency,  not  im- 
personal energy.  The  God  who  abides  in  us  is  a person 
who  is  of  the  essence  of  the  Godhead,  and  is  ever  trans- 
lating its  inner  qualities  and  life  into  the  forms  of  our 
dependent  yet  related  being.  Our  good  is  His  creation ; 
our  truth  is  of  His  revealing.  Our  being  is  void  of  Divine 
content,  save  in  so  far  as  we  allow  Him  to  fill  it.  His 
function  is  by  realizing  God  in  man  to  keep  man  open  to 
God  and  active  in  His  service.  He  is,  as  it  were,  the  energy 
of  the  Father  and  Son  in  the  process  of  continuous  incar- 
nation, and  He  accomplishes  it  by  so  revealing  truth  as  to 
communicate  life  and  determine  conduct.  But  continuous 
incarnation  is  progressive  filiation  ; for  the  Spirit  shapes  the 
later  sons,  singly,  after  the  image  of  the  First-born,  collectively, 
into  a unity  which  is  on  the  Godward  side  a sonship,  on 
the  manward  a brotherhood.  In  other  words,  what  Christ 
was  essentially,  that  man  through  the  Spirit  ethically  and 
ideally  becomes  ; he  realizes  what  we  may  term  the  moral 
essence  or  heart  of  the  eternal  Sonship,  and  is  constituted 
a member  of  the  family  or  household  of  God.  And  so  we 
may  define  the  work  of  the  Spirit  as  twofold — concerned  both 


492  CONTINUOUS  INCARNATION  THROUGH  THE  SPIRIT. 

with  the  generation  and  the  organization  of  life.  In  connection 
with  the  first,  He  is  the  Giver  of  all  truth  and  the  Creator  of 
all  life.  The  field  of  His  operation  is  co-extensive  with' man, 
its  forms  with  his  religious,  moral,  and  intellectual  activities. 
All  His  action  is  normal,  but  its  degrees  and  its  spheres 
vary.  He  inspires  and  creates  revelation  ; He  enlightens  and 
quickens  the  souls  in  and  for  which  it  lives.  In  connection 
with  the  second.  He  renews  and  creates  the  Church,  inhabit- 
ing the  souls  He  has  renewed  and  the  societies  they  constitute. 
The  more  intensive  His  action  grows,  the  holier  becomes  the 
soul  and  the  purer  the  Church.  Through  the  men  He  has 
renewed  and  enlightened  He  reaches  man.  By  ever  bearing 
witness  concerning  the  Son  He  is  ever  creating  the  spirit  of 
sonship. 

But  the  notion  of  the  Spirit’s  action  will  become  clearer  in 
the  discussion  of  its  two  great  spheres — Revelation  and  the 
Church. 


CHAPTER  III. 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION, 

§ I. — Religion  and  Revelation. 

Revelation  is  necessary  to  the  being  of  religion, 
and  religion  is  but  the  symbol  of  the  kindred  natures 
and  correlated  energies  of  God  and  man.  It  means  that 
each  nature  seeks  the  other,  is  capable  of  finding  it,  and  is 
susceptible  to  its  touch.  Religion  may  be  described  as  man’s 
consciousness  of  supernatural  relations,  or  his  belief  in  the 
reciprocal  activities  of  his  own  spirit  and  the  Divine.  The 
activity  of  the  Divine  is  creative  and  communicative,  of  the 
human  is  receptive  and  responsive.  The  phenomena  corre- 
spondent to  the  former  are  those  of  revelation  ; to  the  latter, 
those  of  faith,  worship,  and  obedience.  So  inseparable  are 
these  ideas  both  in  thought  and  in  reality  that  a religion 
can  as  little  exist  without  something  representative  of  revela- 
tion as  without  faith  and  worship.  The  great  religions  have 
written  revelations,  but  writing  is  not  necessary  to  the  idea. 

The  faith  of  China  is  embodied  in  its  classical  books,  of 

I ... 

India  in  its  Vedas,  of  Buddhism  in  its  Tripitakas,  of  Persia 
in  the  Zend  Avesta,  of  Islam  in  the  Koran.  But  the  Delphic 
Oracle  or  the  Oak  of  Dodona  was  to  Greece  the  voice  of  its  god  ; 
the  augur  interpreted  the  divine  will  to  Rome  ; the  Book  of  the 
Dead  revealed  it  to  the  Egyptian  ; the  priest  and  the  astrologer 
to  the  Babylonian.  The  veriest  savage  would  neither  flatter 
nor  beat  his  fetish  unless  he  thought  it  could  communicate  with 
him.  Without,  therefore,  the  belief  in  revelation,  religion 


494 


SPOKEN  AND  WRITTEN  REVELATION 


could  not  exist  ; indeed,  so  necessary  is  the  one  to  the  other 
that  even  a faith  like  Positivism,  consciously  constructed  upon 
the  denial  of  the  supernatural,  has  to  make  Le  Grand  Eire 
communicate  of  his  wealth  to  the  unit  before  the  unit  can 
either  praise  or  worship.  Of  every  religion,  therefore,  the  idea 
of  revelation  is  an  integral  part ; the  man  who  does  not  believe 
that  God  can  speak  to  him  will  not  speak  to  God. 

The  belief  in  revelation,  then,  is  not  a peculiar  creation 
either  of  Judaism  or  of  Christianity  ; it  is  a necessity  common 
to  all  religions.  And  the  higher  the  idea  of  God  they  embody, 
the  more  necessary  does  the  belief  become.  For  just  in  pro- 
portion as  God  is  conceived  to  have  care  for  man  or  the  wish 
to  shape  his  destiny,  will  He  also  be  conceived  as  feeling 
the  obligation  to  speak.  And  a spoken  is  sure  to  become 
a written  word,  with  an  authority  high  in  the  very  degree 
that  it  is  believed  to  be  really  God’s.  And  to  believe  in  a 
written  is  as  rational  as  to  believe  in  a spoken  revelation. 
The  two  indeed  have  been  represented  as  opposites.  Thus 
it  has  been  argued  : “ The  word  of  conscience  is  the  voice 
of  God  ” ; its  light  is  His  “ revealing  and  appealing  look  ” ^ ; 
there  His  speech  is  imperative,  proclaims  an  absolute  law. 
This  law  is  so  “ inseparably  blended  with  the  Holy  Spirit  ” 
that  conscience  becomes  at  once  “ the  very  shrine  of  worship  ” 
and  “ seat  of  authority.”  “ Natural  religion  is  that  in  which 
man  finds  God  ; revealed  religion  is  that  in  which  God  finds 
man.”  ^ Revelation  is,  therefore,  “ immediate,  living  God 
with  living  man  ; spirit  present  with  spirit  ; knowing  Him, 
indeed,  but  rather  known  of  Him.”  Revealed  religion  “ is 
there  by  the  gift  of  God,  so  close  to  the  soul,  so  folded 
in  with  the  very  centre  of  the  personal  life,  that  though 
it  ever  speaks  it  cannot  be  spoken  of”^  It  is  “an  im- 
mediate, Divine  knowledge,”  “ strictly  personal  and  indi- 
vidual, and  must  be  born  anew  in  every  mind.”  ^ But 

^ Dr.  Martineau,  “ Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion,”  p.  71. 

* Ibid.^  p.  302,  * Ibid.^  p.  305.  ^ Ibid.^  p.  307. 


ALIKE  NATURAL  TO  RELIGION  AND  GOD. 


495 


does  this  doctrine  exclude,  as  it  is  meant  to  do,  or  does  it 
render  superfluous,  an  historical  revelation,  with  the  authority 
that  belongs  to  it?  Is  not  its  logical  outcome  the  very 
opposite  of  the  one  intended?  Is  it  possible  to  have  such 
an  authoritative  revelation  in  conscience  without  having  far 
more  ? The  theory  is  based  on  the  notion  of  the  correlated 
and  co-essential  activities  of  God  and  man.  Religion  can  be 
as  little  without  the  action  of  God  as  without  the  action  of 
man.  Where  his  action  is  most  unqualified  and  pure,  religion 
will  possess  in  the  highest  degree  the  character  of  revelation. 
But  what  God  speaks  to  the  man  has  more  than  a mere 
personal  or  local  significance  ; it  has  a universal.  The  man 
who  has  most  clearly  and  certainly  heard  God  has  done  more 
than  hear  Him  for  himself ; he  has  heard  Him  for  the  world, 
and  the  world  ought  to  be  able  to  hear  God  in  the  man.  And 
may  not  the  word  which  God  has  spoken  to  another  become 
a word  which  God  speaks  directly  to  me,  yet  which  I never 
should  have  heard  but  for  the  older  man  of  finer  ear  and 
clearer  soul?  If,  as  Dr.  Martineau  holds,  mind  can  resolve 
cosmical  phenomena  into  the  speech  of  the  causal  mind,  why 
may  not  conscience  find  men  in  history  who  embody  the 
eternal  Will?  Are  there  not  persons  who  have  acted,  and 
still  act,  like  a personalized  conscience  for  the  most  cultivated 
peoples?  And  is  not  this  one  of  the  clear  functions  discharged 
by  Jesus  Christ?  And  if  it  is,  what  is  He  but  an  authority 
in  religion  ? And  if  He  is,  are  not  also  the  men  who  have 
been  most  conscious  of  God  and  His  law?  But  if  He  and 
they  are  authorities,  must  not  the  record  of  their  consciousness 
have  some  value,  even  of  an  authoritative  kind,  for  the  con- 
sciences of  less  inspired  men  ? Again,  the  lives  which  have 
been  created  by  the  Divine  law,  imperatively  heard,  must  be 
lives  of  unusual  worth,  embodying  a higher  will ; and  if  worked 
into  a literature,  that  literature  must  possess  the  quality,  as  it 
were,  of  the  permanent  and  abiding  personalities.  Then,  do 
such  men  or  the  literature  they  create  come  into  being  by 


496 


GOD  INSPIRES,  BUT  MAN  REVEALS. 


accident?  Dr.  Martineau  holds  that  “ the  initiative  of  all 
higher  good  is  with  God  ” ; but  if  so,  then  the  holiest  persons 
are  those  we  most  owe  to  His  initiative  ; and  the  more  clearly 
a person  is  the  result  of  God’s  initiative,  the  more  of  God  does 
he  reveal.  In  other  words,  the  more  evidently  a man  is  an 
organ  of  God  for  the  race,  the  more  ought  we  to  conceive  him 
as  possessed  of  the  functions  and  qualities  which  belong  to 
such  an  organ. 

§ II.— Revelation  and  Inspiration. 

I.  If,  then,  God  ever  speaks  to  the  conscience  of  any  man, 
He  speaks  at  the  same  moment  to  all  men  ;‘and  His  words 
do  not  by  being  written  lose  their  aboriginal  quality.  It 
is  true  they  must  come  to  every  later  as  they  came  to  the 
first  conscience,  directly  from  God  ; but  old  words,  when  He 
speaks,  become  new,  often  with  a spirit  and  life  proportioned 
to  their  age.  The  idea,  then,  of  a written  revelation  may  be 
said  to  be  logically  involved  in  the  notion  of  a living  God. 
Speech  is  natural  to  spirit  ; and  if  God  is  by  nature  spirit, 
it  will  be  to  Him  a matter  of  nature  to  reveal  Himself.  But 
if  He  speaks  to  man,  it  will  be  through  men  ; and  those  who 
hear  best  will  be  those  most  possessed  of  God.  This  pos- 
session is  termed  “ inspiration.”  God  inspires,  man  reveals : 
inspiration  is  the  process  by  which  God  gives  ; revelation  is 
the  mode  or  form — word,  character,  or  institution — in  which 
man  embodies  what  he  has  received.  The  terms,  though  not 
equivalent,  are  co-extensive,  the  one  denoting  the  process  on  its 
inner  side,  the  other  on  its  outer.  According  to  the  quantity 
of  the  inspiration  will  be  the  quality  of  the  revelation  : the 
fuller  or  larger  the  one,  the  more  authoritative  will  be 
the  other.  But  if  the  medium  be  man,  the  double  process 
must  be  conditioned  by  the  laws  which  govern  human  de- 
velopment. The  message  that  comes  to  a man,  he  must 
deliver  in  the  language  he  knows  ; as  he  lives  at  a given 
moment  in  a given  place,  he  must  so  speak  as  to  be 


FUNCTIONS  OF  INSPIRATION  AND  REVELATION.  497 


understood.  What  is  unintelligible  to  the  age  that  receives  it 
will  never  become  intelligible  by  mere  lapse  of  time.  But  this 
involves  the  converse  : the  forms  necessary  to  an  earlier  may 
in  a later  age,  if  made  into  the  permanent  substance  of  the 
revelation,  be  a positive  hindrance  to  belief.  Thus  a scientific 
history  of  creation  would  have  been  as  incomprehensible, 
because  of  sheer  mental  unpreparedness,  to  a Hebrew  recently- 
won  from  the  desert,  as  the  imaginative  narrative  he  could 
understand  would  be,  if  taken  as  sober  or  veiled  science,  to 
the  modern  physicist.  So,  too,  the  “ Ten  Words  ” must 
have  seemed  a most  exacting  and  exhaustive  moral  law 
to  the  still  unsettled  tribes  of  Israel,  though  their  inadequacy 
is  the  thing  that  most  strikes  a Christian.  Hence  if  there  is 
to  be  any  written  revelation,  flexibility  must  be  as  much 
the  attribute  of  its  form  as  permanence  of  its  material  truth. 

Inspiration,  then,  is  not  concerned  simply  with  the  produc- 
tion of  a record,  nor  does  revelation  merely  denote  the  record 
so  produced  ; but  the  one  represents  the  Godward,  the  other 
the  manward  side  of  the  creative  process  in  religion.  The 
creation  of  a sacred  literature  is  not  the  only  or  even  the 
primary  function  of  this  twofold  process,  but,  in  the  temporal 
sense,  a secondary.  The  essential  function  of  inspiration  is; 
the  formation  of  the  personalities — both  the  minds  for  the 
thought  and  the  thought  for  the  minds — through  whom  the 
religion  is  to  be  realized  ; and  the  essential  function  of  revela- 
tion is  to  embody  in  historical,  form — literature,  character, 
worship,  institution — what  inspiration  has  created.  The  one 
represents  the  creative  impulse,  the  other  its  achievement. 
Hence  a written  revelation  does  not  simply  mean  a treasury 
of  ideas,  a sort  of  higher  philosophy,  or  store-house  of  the  best 
thoughts  of  the  best  minds.  Were  it  only  this,  it  would  be 
simply  a means  of  culture,  or  at  most  the  institutes  of  religion 
according  to  some  eclectic  method.  But  it  means  a history 
which  represents  God’s  action  in  time  with  a view  to  a given 
result — say,  the  creation  of  fitter  and  happier  relations  between 

32 


498  REVELATION  UNIVERSAL  AND  PARTICULAR. 

Himself  and  man.  This  means  that  the  action  which  pro- 
duced the  revelation  only  the  more  proceeds  because  of  its 
production.  Its  existence  is  not  a reason  why  the  process 
of  inspiration  should  cease,  but  why  it  should  continue. 
For  the  better  the  terms  of  communion  are  known,  the  more 
intimate  ought  the  communion  to  be  ; the  more  of  God  there 
is  within  the  man,  the  more  will  the  man  be  possessed  of  God. 
In  other  words,  the  conditions  necessary  to  the  creation  of 
the  Word  are  necessary  to  its  permanent  activity,  which  is  only 
a sort  of  continuous  creation.  The  inspiration  of  the  men 
who  read  is  thus  as  intrinsic  and  integral  an  element  in  the 
idea  of  revelation  as  the  inspiration  of  the  men  who  wrote. 
Were  the  Spirit  that  gave  the  Word  to  cease  to  live  or  act, 
the  Word  would  cease  to  reveal.  The  essential  idea,  then, 
is  that  in  revelation  the  living  God  speaks,  not  simply  has 
spoken,  to  living  man. 

2.  But  so  far  the  discussion  has  been  general,  concerned  with 
the  ideas  and  inter-relations  of  inspiration  and  revelation ; 
it  must  now  become  more  special.  And  here  we  may  note, 
that  the  ideas  of  a universal  or  natural  and  a particular  or 
written  revelation  imply  rather  than  exclude  or  contradict  each 
other.  The  universal  is  not  the  uniform,  nor  the  particular 
the  exclusive  ; but  the  one  admits  many  modes  and  degrees, 
the  other  many  qualities  and  kinds.  If  God  were  not 
naturally  related  to  all  men.  He  could  not  be  specially 
related  to  any  man  ; and  if  He  has  special  relations  to 
one,  it  means  that  He  has  both  common  and  personal  re- 
lations to  all.  If  all  truth  is  of  God,  then  the  truth  in 
any  religion  or  any  philosophy  is  there  by  His  action 
and  express  will.  But  the  only  efficient  form  of  universal 
action  is  particular,  and  the  voice  must  be  personalized  in 
order  to  be  heard.  And  so  the  more  strictly  we  conceive 
God  to  enter  into  history,  the  more  natural  does  the  idea  of 
an  historical  revelation  become  ; for  to  affect  the  whole  He 
must  speak  through  persons.  The  most  highly  specialized 


SCRIPTURE  MAKES  THE  PARTICULAR  UNIVERSAL.  499 

action  will,  therefore,  be  the  most  universal.  And  this  is  what 
we  have  in  the  Christian  revelation  ; it  is  a record  of  the 
redeeming  activity  of  God  culminating  in  the  history  of  the 
Redeemer.  What  we  term  the  Scriptures  have  no  meaning 
and  no  function  unless  as  so  conceived.  They  may  be 
described  as  the  mode  by  which  God  as  He  is  in  Christ  lives 
for  the  faith  of  the  Church  and  before  the  mind  of  the  world. 
They,  as  it  were,  so  impersonate,  immortalize,  and  universalize 
the  consciousness  of  Christ,  that  it  can  exercise  everywhere 
and  always  its  creative  and  normative  functions.  This  is  a 
work  they  can  do,  and  nothing  else  can.  Tradition  could  not 
do  it,  for  the  longer  tradition  lives  the  less  veracious  it  be- 
comes, forgets  the  more  the  Original  it  professes  to  remember, 
and  paints  Him  in  the  colours  of  other  and  later  times. 
Nor  can  any  of  the  bodies  men  call  the  Church,  for  Churches 
are  in  their  thoughts  the  creatures  of  local  conditions  ; all  have 
mixed  memories,  all  have  fallible  prides  and  painful  prejudices, 
and  all  have  had  seasons  of  degeneration  that  would  have 
ended  in  death  had  not  the  Master  issued  from  the  Word, 
where,  as  in  a shrine.  He  lives  in  immortal  youth.  The 
Church  was  created  by  the  preaching  of  the  Word  ; and  the 
Scriptures  are  but  this  Word  made  permanent,  that  it  may 
be  preservative  of  the  Church  it  created.  It  died  as  oral 
that  it  might  live  as  written  ; and  if  it  had  not  so  died,  it 
could  not  now  be  alive.  And  so  the  Scriptures,  as  the 
impersonated  consciousness  of  Christ,  made  intelligible  by 
the  background  of  Hebrew  and  the  foreground  of  Apostolic 
history,  remain  to-day,  as  at  first,  the  organ  by  which  He 
speaks  creatively  in  and  to  His  Church,  rebukes  its  sin, 
measures  its  progress,  judges  its  character  and  achievements. 
But  the  Spirit  that  was  necessary  to  the  personal  is  the 
same  to  the  impersonated  consciousness.  The  anointing  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  constitutes  Jesus  in  faith,  as  in  history,  the  Christ. 
There  is  still  no  revelation  without  inspiration  ; and  unless 
God  be  heard  in  the  soul.  He  will  not  be  found  in  the  Word. 


500  HOW  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SCRIPTURES, 


§ III. — The  Scriptures  and  Criticism. 

But  we  cannot  discuss  the  revelation  and  ignore  the  Book 
which  records  it,  especially  as  the  Book  is  passing  through 
fires  that  are  here  thought  to  purify  and  are  there  believed  to 
consume.  It  is  a Book  which  has  been  made  to  serve  many 
and  dissimilar  uses  in  controversy.  In  the  sixteenth  century 
the  Catholic  theologian  argued  against  the  Protestant  thus  : 
‘You  reject  the  authority  of  the  Church,  but  accept  the 
authority  of  the  Scriptures ; yet  without  the  Church  you 
would  never  have  had  the  Scriptures  ; their  creation  and 
preservation,  their  arrangement  and  canonization,  the  separa- 
tion of  the  inspired  from  the  apocryphal  books — in  a word, 
the  whole  process  which  constituted  the  canonical  Scriptures, 
is  the  work  of  the  Church ; and  surely  the  mind  that  formed 
is  the  most  able  to  interpret’  Hence  the  Protestant  was  met 
with  the  dilemma : ‘ If  you  deny  tradition  and  the  Church, 
how  can  you  prove  the  canonicity  and  the  authority  of  the 
Sacred  Books?  If  you  admit  tradition  to  be  necessary  to 
the  canon,  how  can  you  deny  its  function  in  theology  ? ’ 
The  purpose  of  the  argument  was  to  maintain  the  depend- 
ence of  the  Scriptures  on  the  Church,  in  the  Catholic  sense, 
and  so  the  necessity  of  the  Church  to  authority  in  religion. 
In  the  seventeenth  century  the  question  assumed  in  the  hands 
of  the  Catholic  another  form,  and  he  argued  thus  : ‘ The  Bible 
is  not  as  necessary  to  the  Church  as  the  Church  to  the  Bible ; 
hence  those  who  have  the  Church  are  so  far  independent 
of  the  Bible,  but  those  who  deny  the  Church  are  completely 
dependent  on  the  Bible.  But  by  a process  of  criticism  it  is 
possible  to  show  its  insufficiency  as  the  sole  authority  and  so 
prove  that  the  Church  is  necessary  and  alone  adequate  to  the 
maintenance  of  faith.  Then,  too,  for  ourselves  this  argument 
has  many  advantages.  It  is  easier  to  live  under  a single 
authority  than  under  co-ordinate  authorities,  especially  when 
the  one  that  survives  is  so  ambiguous,  variable,  and,  as  it  were, 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  CRITICISM,  ARE  RELATED.  501 


polyglottic,  as  to  be  capable  of  such  diverse  disguised  personal 
interpretations  as  is  “ the  Catholic  creed  and  tradition.”  And, 
happily,  the  very  argument  that  establishes  our  authority 
overturns  the  one  poor  pillar  of  vulgar  Protestantism.’  But  the 
tool  soon  proved  dangerously  double-edged.  Criticism  of  the 
Bible  is  less  possible  to  a system  bound  by  Catholic  tradition 
than  to  a system  independent  of  it — for  the  one  thing  you 
cannot  do  with  tradition  is  to  allow  the  critical  faculty  to  play 
freely  upon  it ; and  if  to  the  tradition  canons  and  decrees  have 
been  added,  then  the  criticism  that  proves  these  inaccurate 
may  not  touch  the  Bible,  but  is  fatal  to  the  Church.  The 
thing  tradition  authenticates  must  be  accepted  in  the  very 
terms  of  the  authenticator,  or  tradition  will  be  even  more 
discredited  than  what  it  was  supposed  to  verify.  Hence  the 
natural  course  of  events  brought  a double  answer  to  the  double 
contention  : the  criticism  that  affected  what  was  accepted  on 
the  Church’s  authority  affected  still  more  the  authority  of  the 
Church,  and  the  inquiry  that  learned  to  doubt  what  tradition 
had  sanctioned  grew  into  doubt  of  tradition. 

On  these  points  the  Catholic  has  almost  ceased  to  trouble 
the  Protestant ; but  his  attitude  has  still  its  representatives, 
though  in  men  of  very  different  schools.  On  the  one  side 
stands  the  rationalist,  who  argues  : ‘ Criticism  has  disproved 
the  traditional  view  of  the  Scriptures ; therefore  they  have 
ceased  to  be  an  authority  in  religion.’  On  the  other  side 
stands  the  conservative  theologian,  who  argues  : ‘ The  tra- 
ditional view  must  be  maintained,  or  the  authority  will  go.’ 
The  logic  of  the  situation  is  in  each  case  the  same  : ‘Grant 
that  certain  conclusions  which  criticism  affirms  as  to  the 
Scriptures,  are  proved  valid,  then  they  cease  to  be  the  Word 
of  God,  and  the  only  authority  which  remains  to  guide  our 
life  and  determine  our  beliefs  is  the  voice  which  speaks  in 
conscience  and  reason.’  The  theologian  who  so  argues  makes 
the  authority  of  Scripture  in  religion  depend  on  questions  that, 
whatever  may  be  said  and  done,  critical  scholarship  alone  can 


502 


WHETHER  CRITICISM  AFFECTS  AUTHORITY. 


decide,  and  will  decide  in  its  own  way,  and  so  decide  as  to 
be  ultimately  believed.  And  it  is  precisely  the  sort  of  argu- 
ment that  the  older  Protestant  had  to  meet  from  the  side  of 
the  older  Catholic,  and  was  able  to  meet  victoriously  in  the 
days  when  his  doctrine  of  the  Scriptures  had  not,  from  the 
exigencies  of  his  own  internal  controversies,  hardened  into  a 
polemical  scholasticism.  As  now  used  by  the  conservative 
theologian  it  is  an  argument  of  the  order  that  seeks  to  preserve 
tradition  at  the  expense  of  faith  ; it  is  the  kind  of  defence  that 
loses  the  citadel  by  concentrating  the  forces  on  the  weakest 
and  most  superfluous  outwork.  And  between  the  rationalist 
and  the  conservative  stands  the  neo-Catholic,  who  argues 
thus  : ‘True,  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  difficult  to  believe 
in  the  Bible  without  believing  in  the  Church.  Modern  criticism 
has  made  an  appeal  to  it  in  the  old  Protestant  way  as  the  sole 
and  sufficient  authority  in  religion  impossible  ; but  this  need 
not  distress  us  overmuch.  We  have  the  Church,  and  its 
authority  is  strengthened  and  made  more  necessary  by  the 
weakened  supremacy  of  the  Bible.  Critical  results  have  in 
them  this  element  of  pure  gain — they  force  us  to  feel  the 
need  and  the  sufficiency  of  the  Catholic  creed  and  tradition.’ 

What  has  created  the  question  in  its  present  form  is  the 
rise  and  growth  of  what  is  termed  the  higher  criticism  as 
applied  to  the  Sacred  Scriptures.  What  we  have,  then,  is  the 
same  major  premiss,  though  with  a changed  minor,  used  to  justify 
three  different  conclusions.  The  common  premiss  is:  Criticism 
has  affected  the  authority  of  the  Bible  in  matters  of  religion, 
— therefore,  says  the  rationalist,  since  criticism  is  true,  the 
authority  is  at  end  ; tJm'efore,  says  the  conservative,  since  the 
authority  must  be  maintained,  criticism  must  be  resisted 
and  its  decisions  rejected  ; therefore,  says  the  neo-Catholic, 
since,  keeping  as  regards  the  Bible  an  open  mind,  we  must 
confess  the  difficulties  created  by  criticism,  let  us  rest  in  the 
authority  of  the  Church.  Now,  what  reply  would  the  older 
Protestantism  have  made  to  all  three  positions,  for  with  all 


REPLY  OF  OLDER  PROTESTANTISM. 


503 


three  it  was  perfectly  familiar?  It  would  have  begun — for  it 
had  Humanism  in  its  blood,  and  knew  too  well  its  obligations 
to  thought  and  inquiry— with  a plea  for  the  use  of  learning 
in  religion,  somewhat  thus  : — 

‘ This  hig-her  criticism  is  but  a name  for  scientific  scholar- 
ship  scientifically  used.  Grant  such  scholarship  legitimate, 
and  the  legitimacy  of  its  use  to  all  fit  subjects  must  also  be 
granted.  Nobody  denies,  nobody  even  doubts,  the  legitim.acy 
of  its  application  to  classical  or  ethnic  literature,  the  necessity 
or  the  excellence  of  the  work  it  has  done,  or,  where  the 
material  allowed  of  it,  the  accuracy  of  the  results  it  has 
achieved.  Without  it  there  would  hardly  be  such  a thing 
as  sequence  or  order  in  the  older  Hindu  literature,  or  any 
knowledge  touching  the  authorship  or  authenticity  of  certain 
Platonic  dialogues  or  Aristotelian  treatises.  To  grant  that 
many  of  its  conclusions  are  arbitrary,  provisional,  or  proble- 
matical, is  simply  to  say  that  it  is  a human  science,  created 
by  men,  worked  by  men,  yet  growing  ever  more  perfect  with 
their  mastery  of  their  material.  Now,  the  Scriptures  either 
are  or  are  not  fit  subjects  for  scholarship.  If  they  are  not, 
then  all  sacred  scholarship  has  been  and  is  a mistake,  and 
they  are  a body  of  literature  possessed  of  the  inglorious 
distinction  of  being  incapable  of  being  understood.  If  they 
are,  then  the  more  scientific  the  scholarship  the  greater  its 
use  in  the  field  of  Scripture,  and  the  more  it  is  reverently 
exercised  on  a literature  that  can  claim  to  be  the  pre-eminent 
sacred  literature  of  the  world,  the  more  will  that  literature  be 
honoured. 

‘ But  if  scientific  scholarship  be  legitimate,  the  higher  criti- 
cism cannot  be  forbidden — the  two  have  simply  moved  pari 
passu.  Hebrew  language  became  another  thing  in  the  hands 
of  Gesenius  from  what  it  had  been  in  those  of  Parkhurst  ; the 
genius  of  Ewald  made  it  a still  more  living  and  mobile  and 
significant  thing.  The  discoveries  in  Egypt  and  Mesopo- 
tamia have  made  forgotten  empires  and  lost  literatures  rise 


504  HIGHER  CRITICISM  IS  HIGHER  SCHOLARSHIP. 

out  of  their  graves  to  elucidate  the  contemporary  Hebrew 
history  and  literature.  More  intimate  knowledge  of  Oriental 
man  and  nature,  due  to  personal  acquaintance  with  them, 
has  qualified  scholars  the  better  to  read  and  understand 
the  Semitic  mind.  A more  accurate  knowledge  of  ancient 
versions,  combined  with  a more  scientific  archaeology  and  a 
clearer  insight  into  the  intellectual  tendencies  and  religious 
methods  of  the  old  world,  especially  in  their  relation  to 
literary  activity  and  compilation,  has  enabled  the  student 
to  apply  new  and  more  certain  canons  to  all  that  concerned 
the  formation  of  books  and  texts.  The  growth  of  skilled 
interpretation,  exercised  and  illustrated  in  many  fields,  has 
accustomed  men  to  the  study  of  literature  and  history  to- 
gether, showing  how  the  literature  lived  through  the  people 
and  the  people  were  affected  by  the  literature  ; and  so  has 
trained  men  to  read  with  larger  eyes  the  books  and  peoples 
of  the  past.  With  so  many  new  elements  entering  into 
sacred  scholarship,  it  is  impossible  that  traditional  views  and 
traditional  canons  should  remain  unaffected.  If  ever  any- 
thing was  inevitable  through  the  progress  of  science,  it  was 
the  birth  of  the  higher  criticism  ; and  once  it  existed  it  was 
no  less  a necessity  that  it  should  have  a mind  and  reach  con- 
clusions of  its  own.  Where  scholarship  has  the  right  to  enter, 
it  has  the  right  to  stay  ; and  it  cannot  stay  in  idleness. 
What  it  does  and  decides  may  be  wrong,  but  the  wrong 
must  be  .proved  by  other  and  better  scholarship.  In  other 
words,  once  analysis  of  the  objects  or  material  of  faith  has 
been  allowed,  a process  has  been  commenced  by  reason  that 
only  reason  can  conclude.  And  this  process  the  higher  criti- 
cism did  not  begin,  but  those  who  allowed  that  scholarship 
had  a function  in  the  interpretation  of  Holy  Writ’ 

But  once  the  older  Protestantism  had  afifirmed  that  matters 
of  scholarship  must  be  dealt  with  by  scholars  and  in  the 
methods  of  the  schools,  undeterred  by  alarms  on  the  right 
hand  or  the  left,  it  would  have  proceeded  to  the  more  material 


CHRIST  CREATES  SCRIPTURES  AND  CHURCH.  505 


questions,  and  addressed  itself  first  to  the  rationalist  within 
the  Catholic  thus  : ‘ What  you  call  the  Church  is  not  the 
Church  to  me,  unless  a part  can  be  put  for  the  whole,  and 
a part  not  all  of  which  belongs  to  the  whole.  But  even 
granting  your  notion  of  the  Church,  you  make  a claim  for 
it  which  cannot  be  allowed,  for  it  cannot  be  made  good.  So 
far  as  concerns  the  Bible  the  real  starting-point  of  the 
discussion  is  not  the  abstract  idea  of  canonicity,  or  the 
process  by  which  the  canon  was  formed,  but  the  concrete 
and  historical  Christ,  His  relation  to  the  Scriptures  and 
theirs  to  Him.  He  'created  the  Scriptures  as  He  created 
the  Church  ; both  are  forms  of  His  activity,  valid  as  they 
derive  their  being  from  Him,  authentic  and  authoritative  only 
as  possessed  of  Him  and  authorized  by  Him.  These  two,  as 
derivative,  can  be  in  harmony  with  each  other  only  as  they 
are  in  harmony  with  Him,  and  the  Scripture  whose  authority 
we  obey  is  not  the  Book  the  Catholic  Church  sanctioned, 
but  the  Word  which  Christ  spoke  and  by  which  He  created 
the  Church.  Without  the  Scriptures  we  could  never  stand 
in  the  presence  of  the  Founder,  know  His  mind,  or  see 
how  He  laid  the  foundation  of  the  society  that  was  to  be. 
With  them  the  humblest  Christian,  as  much  as  the  stateliest 
Church,  can  reach  the  Presence,  and  know  and  believe.  The 
Scriptures,  then,  have  the  prior  existence,  owe  everything  to 
the  Master,  and  do  everything  for  the  Church.  Then,  if  the 
Bible  is  made  to  depend  on  the  Church,  is  it  not  evident  that 
it  is  the  Bible  conceived  as  a book,  and  not  as  a revelation  ? 
For  these  two  things  are  most  dissimilar,  and  indeed  opposite. 
The  authority  that  belongs  to  the  Bible  belongs  to  it  not  as 
book,  but  as  revelation  ; what  the  canonizing  process  created 
was  not  a revelation,  but  a book.  In  other  words,  the  process 
that  created  the  revelation  was  prior  and  causal  and  material, 
but  the  process  that  created  the  canon  later  and  sequent  and 
formal.  The  revelation  did  not  come  to  be  because  of  the 
canon  ; the  canon  came  to  be  because  of  the  revelation.’ 


5o6 


CANONIZATION  IS  NOT  AUTHORIZATION. 


§ IV.— The  Bible  as  the  Authority  in  Religion. 

Here  our  first  question  is,  What  gives  its  authority  to  the 
Bible?  Does  this  authority  belong  to  the  Book  as  constituted, 
or  to  the  constituents  of  the  Book  ? The  Bible,  on  any  theory, 
did  not  come  into  being  as  it  is  ; it  came  in  many  parts, 
through  many  persons,  out  of  many  places  and  times.  Now, 
what  relation  has  the  canonizing  or  codifying  or  constitutive 
process  which  made  it  a whole,  and  the  whole  we  know,  to 
the  religious  character  and  authority  of  the  Book  as  such, 
or  the  several  books  it  contains  ? Had  a book,  or  even 
a fragment  of  a book,  no  religious  authority  or  function  till 
incorporated  and  superscribed  ? If  this  was  so,  then  the 
canonizing  was  an  authorizing  process  ; it  created  the  in- 
spiration and  the  authority  of  what  it  sanctioned.  If  this 
was  not  so,  then  how  can  the  tradition  which  canonized 
have  affected  the  intrinsic  merits  or  essential  character  of 
the  book  ? and  how  can  the  criticism  which  seeks  simply 
to  restore  the  books  to  their  original  form  either  annul  or 
lessen  or  even  discredit  their  inspiration  and  authority  ? 
Canonization  is  like  codification  ; the  formation  of  a code 
implies  the  existence  of  the  laws.  A law  does  not  become 
authoritative  by  being  codified  ; it  is  codified  because  it  is 
authoritative.  So  a book  does  not  become  inspired  by 
being  authenticated,  canonized,  or  even  assigned  to  an 
author.  Hebrews,  for  example,  was  long  outside  the  canon : 
got  into  a local  before  it  was  received  into  the  catholic  canon ; 
was  denied  to  Paul,  then  attributed  to  Paul,  and  is  all  but 
unanimously  denied  to  him  again.  But  Hebrews  was  pre- 
cisely as  much  inspired,  and  possessed  of  exactly  as  much 
authority,  though  it  might  be  an  authority  much  less  recog- 
nized, before  as  after  its  incorporation  in  the  canon,  when  it 
was  denied  as  when  it  was  attributed  to  Paul.  It  is  not 
to  their  co-ordination  and  codification  that  the  books  owe 
their  authority,  but  to  their  essential  character  and  contents 


ONE  INFALLIBLE  NEEDS  MANY  INFALLIBILITIES.  507 


The  tradition  or  the  polemic  that  obscures  these  hides  the 
authority  ; the  criticism  that  makes  them  most  manifest 
reveals  it.  To  attempt  to  make  a multitude  of  books,  into  a 
single  uniform  authority,  when  almost  all  the  books  are,  from 
the  nature  of  the  case,  of  different  values,  is  the  surest  way 
to  discredit  even  the  most  authoritative. 

But,  secondly,  if  the  canonizing  process  be  so  inviolable 
that  one  cannot  touch  it  or  its  conclusions  without  discredit- 
ing the  Scriptures  or  reducing  the  authority  of  the  Word  of 
God,  then  let  us  see  who  were  the  canonizing  agents,  and 
with  what  functions  and  powers  we  must  invest  them. 
These  agents,  and  they  alone,  had  power  to  constitute  the 
Word  of  God  ; what  existed  before  their  action  was  a 
potential,  not  an  actual,  revelation  ; they  translated  its  poten- 
tiality into  actuality.  On  this  theory,  the  real  organ  of  God 
was  not  the  prophet  or  apostle  who  spoke  and  wrote,  but  the 
body  who  indorsed  and  authorized  their  writings.  And  what 
was  this  body  ? One  hard  to  define  ; indeed,  incapable  of 
definition.  The  Catholic  speaks  of  it  as  the  Church ; but 
history  knows  that  the  Church  which  is  called  Catholic  was 
only  a late  factor  in  the  process  of  canonization.  That 
process  has  many  factors,  some  much  older  than  the  Church. 
It  was  pursued  for  the  Old  Testament  in  rabbinical  or  Tal- 
mudical  schools,  following  the  traditions  now  of  the  Temple, 
now  of  the  synagogue,  now  of  certain  classes  and  teachers  ; 
for  the  New  Testament  by  Fathers  and  heretics,  councils  and 
custom,  local  tradition  and  exegetical  schools.  If  we  would 
secure  the  inviolable  veracity  and  authority  of  the  result, 
we  are  bound  in  logic  to  affirm  the  infallibility  not  only 
of  the  process,  but  of  all  its  factors.  Were  they  capable  of 
erring,  we  could  have  no  sufficient  guarantee  of  the  in- 
errancy of  the  result.  But  this  becomes  an  affirmation  not 
simply  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible,  but  of  all  the  schools 
and  agencies  that  created  it  as  a text  and  as  a book  ; above 
all,  of  those  most  mixed  and  heterogeneous  Jewish  bodies 


508  AUTHORITY  OF  REVELATION,  NOT  OF  BOOK. 


whose  action  antedated  and  normated  the  action  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  Apart  from  the  infallibility  of  the  creating 
bodies,  the  infallibility  of  the  created  results  cannot  be  main- 
tained. 

We  come  back,  then,  to  the  position  that  authority  belongs 
to  the  Bible,  not  as  a book,  but  as  a revelation  ; and  it  is  a 
revelation,  not  because  it  has  been  canonized,  but  because 
it  contains  the  history  of  the  Redeemer  and  our  redemption. 
Critical  questions  lie  beyond  the  scope  of  this  book ; but  it  is 
strictly  germane  to  its  theological  purpose  to  say  : — Criticism 
has,  by  bringing  the  sacred  books  into  relation  with  sacred 
history,  done  something  to  restore  them  to  their  real  and 
living  significance.  The  negative  critic  may  assail  the  books  » 
that  he  may  the  better  assail  the  higher  and  more  Divine 
elements  in  the  history ; but  the  conservative  critic  who 
identifies  the  veracity  of  a late  and  formal  tradition  with  the 
revelation,  tends  to  lose  both  the  inspiration  and  the  history 
that  are  in  the  book.  He  may  turn  the  record  of  God  s 
redeeming  activity  in  the  world  into  a body  of  evidences,  or 
a repository  of  proof-texts,  but  only  the  more  will  he  fail  to 
see  how  revelation  lives  in  and  through  and  with  the  people 
of  God.  Criticism  has,  by  binding  the  book  and  the  people 
together,  and  then  connecting  both  with  the  providential 
order  of  the  world,  given  us  back  the  idea  of  the  God  who 
lives  in  history  through  His  people,  and  a people  who  live 
for  Him  through  His  Word.  The  divorce  of  God  and  His 
people,  who  must  be  in  each  other  in  order  to  the  continued 
being  of  revelation  by  a continuous  process  of  inspiration, 
has  been  a calamitous  thing  for  theology  and  the  Church, 
especially  in  their  relation  to  the  Bible.  The  Church  has  lost 
the  sense  of  its  own  continuity  and  unity,  and  its  dependence 
for  both  on  the  continued  activity  within  it  of  the  God  who 
speaks  by  His  Spirit  that  He  may  live  in  the  Word. 


QUESTIONS  THEOLOGICAL  AND  LITERARY. 


509 


§ V.— Whether  a Constructive  Doctrine  be 
Possible. 

We  are  now  in  a position  to  define  the  positive  principles 
necessary  to  a constructive  theory  of  the  Christian  revelation. 

i.  Its  theological  basis  is  the  regal  Paternity.  The  God  who 
loves  man  will  not  cease  to  speak  to  him  ; revelation,  in  its 
widest  sense,  is  the  process  by  which  He  communicates  truth 
in  order  to  the  creation  of  life  and  the  communion  of  spirit. 
But  the  supreme  act  of  revelation  was  the  Incarnation,  or 
the  manifestation  of  the  P'atherhood  through  the  sacrifice  of 
the  Father  and  the  self-denial  or  humiliation  or  kenosis  of  the 
Son.  This  act  involved  the  being  of  the  Son  under  conditions 
of  humanity,  but  no  less  the  history  that  should  translate  His 
existence  under  these  local  and  temporal  conditions  into  a 
universal  and  permanent  being.  We  know  what  He  is  for 
ever  by  knowing  what  He  was  then,  and  to  know  Him  is  to 
know  God. 

ii.  In  order  to  the  universality  and  permanence  of  this 
revelation  a literature  is  necessary  ; it  can  live  only  as  it  is 
written.  But  the  conditions  necessary  to  the  Person  being  a 
revelation  remain  needful  to  the  literature.  The  completion 
of  the  record — i.e.,  the  history  that  redeems — is  not  the  com- 
pletion or  cessation  of  the  revealing  action,  but  rather  the 
condition  of  its  continuance.  The  written  Word  is  a medium 
through  which  the  living  God  and  the  living  soul  feel  after 
and  find  each  other ; but  in  order  to  this  the  word  must  be 
divorced  neither  from  God  nor  the  soul. 

iii.  Hence  the  Bible,  to  be  a revelation,  must  not  only 
be  bound  through  its  books  to  a completed  past,  but  through 
the  Spirit  of  God  to  a living  present.  Revelation  is  thus  as 
to  its  accidents  a literary  question,  but  as  to  its  essence  a 
spiritual  experience ; it  denotes  a living  process,  not  simply 
a finished  product  or  completed  result.  The  Word  of  God 


510 


REVELATION  LIVES  THROUGH  THE  SPIRIT 


is  a large  term  ; it  does  not  denote  a closed  book,  but  a 
living  spirit — not  something  that  is  dead,  a letter  that  can 
be  printed  in  black  on  white,  a book  which  compositors 
have  set  up  and  binders  have  bound  and  educated  people 
can  read.  It  is  living  ; it  has  no  being  without  the  Spirit 
of  God  ; were  that  Spirit  to  be  withdrawal,  the  Scriptures 
would  cease  to  exist  ; where  they  w^ere,  a literature  would 
remain,  but  not  the  Word  of  the  living  God.  The  continuance 
of  the  Spirit,  then,  is  necessary  to  the  being  of  the  Word,  and 
His  continuance  is  the  source  and  secret  of  its  authority. 
Christ  is  of  all  historical  forces  and  factors  of  faith  and  obedience 
infinitely  the  greatest,  yet  He  lives  because  the  Spirit  lives 
to  speak  of  Him  and  show  Him  unto  men.  Unless,  then, 
the  Spirit  that  gave  the  Word  inspire  the  spirits  that  hear 
and  receive  it,  it  can  be  no  inspired  Word.  Inspiration 
belongs  to  it  not  as  the  organized  or  authorized  literature 
which  w^e  call  the  Bible,  but  by  virtue  of  its  being  at  once 
the  creation  of  the  Spirit  and  the  condition  and  form  of 
His  continued  activity.  This  was  what  the  Reformers 
meant  by  the  testimonium  Spiritus  sancti  internum,  and  it 
w'as  this  that  made  them  so  independent  of  the  polemic  of 
Rome  and  the  criticial  denials  to  which  it  attempted  to 
drive  them. 

iv.  But  the  Spirit  can  continue  and  the  Word  can  live 
only  provided  each  has  a medium  in  and  through  which  to 
w'ork.  The  medium  for  each  is  the  Church,  the  region 
or  society  of  holy  souls,  in  which  holiness  is  created  and 
propagated.  The  Church  is  a large  term  ; it  does  not 
denote  Churches ; polity  is  not  of  its  essence,  saints  and 
souls  are.  The  priest  and  the  presbyter,  the  bishop  and 
the  preacher,  are  of  the  accidents  of  the  Churches,  not  of 
the  essence  of  the  Church ; the  sainted  father  or  mother, 
the  holy  home,  the  godly  man,  the  living  Spirit,  are  of  the 
essence  of  the  Church,  not  of  the  accidents  of  the  Churches. 
And  it  is  through  wTat  is  of  the  essence  of  the  Church  that 


IN  THE  CHURCH  AND  FOR  THE  REASON.  51I 

the  authority  of  God  is  manifested  and  His  truth  appre- 
hended. It  is  holiness  that  creates  holiness,  God  in  the 
priest  or  preacher  or  parent  that  creates  godliness  and 
obedience  in  the  soul. 

V.  But  the  Word  which  thus  lives  through  the  Spirit 
in  the  Church  has  as  its  function  to  bring  the  truth  of  God 
to  man.  In  order  to  this  it  must  convince  the  Reason, 
which,  though  once  a proud  heatheness,  has  now  a redeemed 
being.  The  reason  in  whose  name  Martineau  criticizes 
revelation,  and  the  conscience  in  which  he  seats  authority, 
are  not  fresh  creations ; centuries  of  nurture  are  in  them  ; 
much  of  what  he  finds  there  are  inherited  riches,  wealth 
derived  from  remembered  and  forgotten  ancestors  to  whom 
the  Scriptures  were  a living  authority.  He  may  be  content 
with  his  inheritance,  but  what  his  reason  and  conscience 
are,  they  are  by  virtue  of  what  he  has  received,  not  simply 
by  virtue  of  what  he  is  and  has  attempted.  This  means 
that  reason  is  now  so  penetrated  with  Christian  elements 
that  a man  even  in  reasoning  against  historical  revelation 
cannot  purge  himself  from  what  he  owes  to  it;  and  it  means 
more — that  he  has  but  to  be  faithful  to  his  reason  to  be  led 
beyond  it  to  the  source  of  the  older  formative  influences. 
Certainly,  though  a man  by  reason  may  reject  revelation,  he 
can  never  without  reason  either  know  or  accept  it.  And  it 
is  to  reason  that  the  living  truth  makes  its  ceaseless  appeal. 

Now,  all  these  elements,  concordant  and  concurrent  in 
action,  are  necessary  to  the  being  of  a living  revelation,  and  its 
authority  in  religion.  Without  the  living  and  incorporated 
unity,  realized  in  and  through  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  a satisfied 
reason,  an  inspired  society,  and  a living  God  seeking  the 
living  soul,  the  written  revelation  will  not  reveal.  And  with- 
out these  there  can  be  no  reign  of  authority  in  religion, 
while  with  these  authority  cannot  but  reign.  What  is  needed, 
therefore,  to  a true  doctrine  of  revelation  is  the  restoration 


512 


WITHOUT  THE  UNITIES  NO  REVELATION. 


of  the  organic  union,  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  God,  the 
Reason,  the  Church,  and  the  Scriptures.  Without  any  one 
of  these  the  very  conditions  that  make  it  possible  are 
absent.  Without  God  the  Church  has  no  Head  and  no  end, 
the  Word  no  truth  and  no  function,  the  Reason  no  goal  to 
reach  and  no  object  to  revere ; without  the  Church  the  Word 
has  no  medium  to  live  in  ; without  the  Word  the  Church  has 
no  truth  to  live  by  ; without  the  Reason  the  Church  has  no 
soul  to  form,  and  the  Word  no  subject  to  address ; and  with- 
out the  Spirit  no  one  of  them  has  any  capability  of  being 
either  real  or  religious.  If  the  reason  alone  be  emphasized, 
we  have  rationalism  ; if  the  Church,  as  organized  and 
hierarchical,  we  have  Catholicism,  Roman  or  Anglican ; if 
the  Word,  as  written  and  a record,  we  have  Scholastic 
Protestantism  ; but  in  none  of  them  have  we  any  doctrine 
of  revelation  which  makes  the  authority  of  God  in  the  sphere 
of  religion  living  and  spiritual. 


B.~COn  AS  INTERPRETED  BY  CHRIST  THE 
DETERMINATIVE  PRINCIPLE  IN  THE 
CHURCH, 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  NEW 
TESTAMENT 

§ I.— The  Conceptions  of  God  and  the  Church. 

IN  the  discussion  which  has  just  been  concluded  the 
term  “ Church  ” has  been  freely  used,  and  even  pro- 
visionally defined  ; but  it  is  too  essential  to  the  mind  and 
religion  of  Christ  to  receive  only  incidental  mention.  In 
its  most  general  sense  it  may  be  described  as  the  society 
He  instituted,  and  constituted  out  of  those  who  through 
faith  in  Him  were  elect  unto  the  life  and  fellowship  of 
God.  But  what  this  very  general  idea  means  can  only 
become  evident  when  we  have  discussed  certain  much  more 
specific  questions — such  as.  What  were  the  laws  of  this 
society?  How  was  it  to  be  organized,  administered,  aug- 
mented, and  maintained  ? 

Now,  in  order  to  bring  this  question  into  relation  with 
those  already  discussed,  we  must  determine  the  relation  in 
which  the  three  great  ideas  of  God,  religion,  and  the  Church 
stand  related  to  each  other  both  in  themselves  and  in  the 
mind  of  Christ.  A religion  always  is  as  its  God  is,  and  a 
society  is  as  its  God  and  its  religion  are.  In  other  words,  the 
qualities  of  a deity  are  invariably  reflected  in  the  faith  and 

33 


514  JUDAISM  BY  ITS  POLITY  AN  HENOTIIEISM. 


conduct,  the  polity  and  worship  of  his  people.  Because 
of  this  indissoluble  relation  the  terms  must  be  interpreted 
together — the  society  through  the  religion,  the  religion  through 
God.  Taking  these,  then,  as  constituting  a living  unity,  we 
may  say,  Jesus  Christ  was  the  Creator  of  three  things  which 
were  yet  one — a Monotheism,  a religion,  and  a society,  which 
were  all  at  once  ethical  and  universal.  Monotheism,  in  the 
strict  and  proper  sense  of  the  term,  did  not  exist  before 
Him.  Certain  of  the  prophets  of  Israel  had  been  Mono- 
theists, but  Judaism  was  not  a Monotheism.  For  a religion 
that  is  so  bound  up  with  a tribe  and  its  polity  as  to  be 
incapable  of  universal  realization,  does  not  really  know  God 
as  absolutely  supreme.  The  limitations  of  the  polity  which 
is  His  sole  organ,  and  of  the  single  temple  which  is  His 
exclusive  home,  are  directly  imposed  upon  God.  Their 
particularism  contradicts  and  cancels  His  universalism.  And 
this  was  what  happened  in  the  Jews’  religion.  It  made, 
according  to  one  interpretation,  the  priesthood  and  the 
Temple,  according  to  another,  Moses  and  the  law,  necessary 
to  the  very  being  of  the  religion.  In  order  to  be  possessed 
of  God  men  had  to  become  Jews,  for  they  were  the  appointed 
channels  of  “ His  covenanted  mercies.”  Hence  the  only  way 
by  which  God  could  become  universal  was  by  man  being 
completely  Judaized.  But  while  this  may  be  termed  Heno- 
theism — which  may  be  most  accurately  defined  in  the  terms 
of  Paul,  “God  is  the  God  of  the  Jews  only,”  i.e.,  the  Deity 
which  is  one,  is  Deity  only  for  the  tribe, — yet  it  is  in  no  proper 
sense  Monotheism — which  means  that  alike  in  idea  and  reality 
God  is  the  God  of  all  men,  open  and  accessible  to  all.  More- 
over, the  Deity  who  is  reduced  to  the  proportions  of  the 
polity  which  incorporates  Him,  is  a Deity  who  suffers  more 
in  character  than  in  power,  for  He  is  conceived  as  One  who 
(a)  is  the  Head  of  a tribe,  whose  enmities,  jealousies,  pride 
and  even  barbarities.  His  authority  is  made  to  sanction,  and 
who  ifi')  has  consented  to  let  His  covenant  and  His  mercies  be 


CHRIST  THE  CREATOR  OF  MONOTHEISM. 


515 


translated  out  of  the  terms  of  His  own  infinitude  into  those 
of  a tribal  finitude. 

We  may  say,  then,  that,  so  far  as  realized  religions  were 
coneerned,  we  had  before  Christ  Polytheisms,  Pantheisms, 
Henotheisms,  but  no  Monotheism.  By  one  and  the  same  act 
He  created  the  conception  of  one  God,  one  religion,  and  one 
society  ; but  the  first  would  have  been  inefficient  and  incomplete 
if  it  had  not  been  explicated  in  the  second  and  incorporated  in 
the  third.  The  religion  explicated  the  God,  for  it  was  ethical 
in  nature  as  He  was  in  character  ; the  society  incorporated 
His  ideal,  for  it  was  universal  as  God  was  one,  and  filial  as  He 
was  Father.  What  marks  antiquity  is  the  pride  of  race  made 
invincible  by  the  pride  of  racial  religion  ; what  marks  the  faith 
of  Christ  is  that  the  ideas  of  God  and  man  are  so  bound 
together  by  the  concrete  realities  of  religion  and  the  Church 
that  they  all  struggle  towards  the  same  end,  a relation  of 
sonship  to  God  that  shall  be  expressed  and  realized  in  the 
brotherhood  of  man. 

§ II. — Christ  and  the  Idea  of  the  Church. 

Now,  our  first  question  is.  How  did  Christ  conceive  and 
describe  His  society?  And  here  we  note  as  most  charac- 
teristic that  His  familiar  phrase  was  not  “ the  Church,”  but 
“ the  kingdom  of  heaven  ” or  “ of  God,”  or  simply  “ My 
kingdom.”  The  mere  figures  are  significant : the  term 
“ kingdom  ” is  used  in  the  Gospels  to  denote  His  society 
1 12  times,  and  almost  always  by  Himself;  but  “Church” 
only  twice.  Now,  the  names  are  either  synonymous  or  they 
are  not.  If  they  are  synonymous,  it  must  be  possible  to 
translate  the  Church  into  the  terms  of  the  kingdom,  and  the 
kingdom  into  the  terms  of  the  Church.  If  they  are  not,  then 
the  kingdom,  as  Christ’s  most  used,  most  emphasized,  and 
most  descriptive  name  for  His  society,  must  contain  His 
determinative  idea — i.e.,  the  Church  must  be  construed  through 


5i6 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  KINGDOM. 


the  kingdom,  not  the  kingdom  through  the  Church.  If  the 
first  position  be  chosen,  then  the  neo-Catholics  who  seem 
almost  with  one  consent  to  have  forgotten  the  kingdom,  have 
failed  to  interpret  the  Church  ; if  the  second,  then  there  is 
behind  and  beneath  the  Church  another  notion,  as  it  were, 
the  aboriginal  ideal  of  the  Christian  society,  to  which  they 
have  given  no  adequate  recognition,  and  for  which  they  have 
found  no  fit  place.  In  the  one  case,  their  idea  of  the  Church 
is  not  adequate  ; in  the  other,  their  Church  is  not  the  ultimate 
normal  polity  or  social  ideal  of  Jesus. 

The  idea  of  the  kingdom,  then,  is  primary.  He  comes  to 
found  or  create  it.  His  instrument  is  preaching  or  teaching^  ; 
His  message  is  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom.^  He  is  the  Sower 
who  casts  the  seed,  which  is  the  Word,  into  the  hearts  of 
men.^  He  defines  it  by  various  terms  ; it  is  “of  heaven  in 
contradistinction  to  the  “ kingdoms  of  the  world  ” — it  has 
none  of  the  violence,  the  policies,  the  evils  of  the  earth  ; it  is 
“ of  God  ” ® in  distinction  from  “ the  kingdom  of  Satan  ” — i.e.^  it 
is  the  realm  of  healing,  harmony,  love,  and  beneficence.  It  is  a 
kingdom  of  the  truth  ® — i.e.,  He  is  a King  by  virtue  of  His  very 
being,  and  He  bears  witness  to  the  truth,  while  His  citizens 
are  the  men  who,  being  of  the  truth,  hear  His  voice.  It  is 
present^;  men  may  enter  it,®  are  even  within  it®;  the  terms  of 
entrance  are  obedience  to  the  Word,^®  or  the  child-like  spirit.^^ 
If  comes  without  observation,^®  spreads  quietly  like  leaven,^® 
grows  like  seed.^'^  It  is  ethical  in  character  ; to  seek  it  is  to  seek 
the  righteousness  of  God,^^  to  pray  for  its  coming  is  to  ask 

1 Matt.  iv.  17,  23. 

* Matt.  ix.  35 ; Mark  i.  14;  Luke  viii.  i. 

* Matt.  xiii.  3,  19,  23  ; cf.  xxiv.  7,  and  John  xviii.  36, 

< Matt.  V.  19,  xviii.  4,  xix.  12. 

* Matt.  xii.  28,  cf.  26;  Luke  xi.  20,  cf.  17,  18. 

* John  xviii.  37. 

* Luke  xvii.  21 ; Matt.  v.  3,  xii.  28  ; Mark  x.  14. 

® Matt.  xxi.  31.  Luke  xvii.  20. 

® Matt.  xi.  II  ; Luke  vii  28.  Matt.  xiii.  33. 

Matt.  xii.  19,  52.  Matt.  xiii.  31,  32, 

“ Matt,  xxiii.  3,  xix.  14.  Matt.  vi.  33. 


THE  FOUNDER  AND  HIS  PEOPLE.  517 

that  the  will  of  God  may  be  done  on  earth  as  in  heaven.^  The 
men  it  honours  and  rewards  are  the  poor  in  spirit,  the  per- 
secuted for  righteousness’  sake,  those  who  do  the  will  of  God, 
confess  Christ  before  men,  cultivate  His  spirit,  live  His  life  of 
ministry  and  grace.^  The  signs  of  the  kingdom  are  all  spiritual 
and  ethical,  relate  to  gracious  helpfulness  and  service,  never 
to  officers  or  acts  of  ceremonial.^  It  is  universal,  open  to  all 
without  respect  to  place  or  race.'^ 

Now,  it  is  remarkable  that  in  the  language  of  Christ  as 
to  the  kingdom  the  emphasis  falls,  not  upon  the  officials,  if 
officials  there  be,  or  on  Sacramental  acts,  if  such  acts  there  be, 
but  upon  the  people,  upon  persons,  their  personal  qualities, 
conduct,  character,  their  state  and  living  before  God,  their 
behaviour  and  ministry  among  men.  He,  indeed,  calls  dis- 
ciples and  commissions  apostles,  but  He  deals  with  them  as 
men  who  must  be  of  a given  spirit  if  they  would  enter  the 
kingdom  ; their  eminence  in  it  depends,  not  on  office,  but  on 
spiritual  qualities  ; and  their  rewards,  not  on  dignities  pos- 
sessed, but  on  range  and  kind  of  service — none  being  sacerdotal, 
all  spiritual  and  human. 

And  this  is  made  more  significant  by  two  things — His 
example  and  His  instructions.  He  is  their  type  ; they  are  to 
be  as  He  is  and  has  been — One  who  heals,  helps,  saves,  a 
Minister  to  all  the  needy.^  He  is  a Teacher,  a Preacher, 
whose  word  has  power.  He  makes  no  sacerdotal  claim,  does 
no  sacerdotal  act.  His  ministry  is  more  in  Galilee  than  in 
Judaea,  more  in  the  synagogue  and  the  home  than  in  the 
Temple ; He  is  the  Rabbi,  but  never  to  any  man,  least  of 
all  to  Himself,  is  He  the  Priest.®  If  the  ministry  is  to  be 
received  from  Him,  and  He  is  to  remain  the  ideal  which 
all  who  enter  it  ought  to  seek  to  realize,  then  it  must  be 
a ministry  that  neither  renders,  nor  cultivates,  nor  practises 

' Matt.  vi.  10.  •*  Matt.  viii.  ii 

* Matt.  V,  3,  10,  vii.  21,  xxv.  i,  34.  ^ Matt,  xviii.  1-4,  xxv.  34-40. 

® Matt.  xi.  2-12  ; Luke  iv.  18,  19.  ® Supra,  p.  49. 


518 


PETER  AND  THE  KEYS  OF  THE  KINGDOM. 


sacerdotal  sanctities,  but  is  inspired  by  the  enthusiasm  for 
service,  by  the  love  of  man,  by  fear  of  evil,  by  the  passion 
to  heal  and  to  save,  by  the  gentle  hand,  the  generous  heart, 
the  gracious  presence,  the  tongue  eloquent  to  persuade  the 
wicked  to  become  the  good.  And  as  was  His  example, 
such  were  His  instructions.^  He  sent  His  disciples  out  to 
preach,  to  heal,  to  live  as  He  lived,  to  suffer  as  He  suffered, 
to  seek  His  ends,  to  surrender,  as  He  surrendered,  all  to  God  ; 
to  be  prophets,  as  He  was  a prophet ; to  represent  Him,  as 
He  represented  God.  Yet  nowhere  is  there  a phrase  or 
term  that  so  much  as  hints  at  any  sacerdotal  office,  or  act, 
or  any  official  accessories.  The  only  text  that  may  seem  to 
touch  on  peculiar  official  functions  or  powers  is  the  saying 
to  Peter  : “ I will  give  unto  thee  the  keys  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  ” ^ But  the  verse  must  be  read  in  its  connection. 
Peter  had  made  his  confession,  “ Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  Son 
of  the  living  God  ” ; on  this  rock,  this  truth  confessed.  His 
Church  was  to  be  built  ; and  the  confessor,  the  man  who 
stood  by  this  truth,  preached  it,  obeyed  it,  was,  as  such,  to 
have  the  keys.  It  was  not  an  absolute  promise  to  an  official, 
made  to  a man  who  holds  an  office  simply  because  of  the 
office  he  holds.  Nor  is  it  a promise  to  his  successors,  for  of 
succession  or  successors  there  is  no  word  ; but  only  to  a person 
who  has  made  a confession,  because  of  the  confession  he  has 
made.  And  this  is  made  apparent  by  the  next  paragraph, 
where  Peter,  because  he  rebukes  Jesus  for  prophesying  of  His 
death,  receives  the  rebuke  : “ Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan  ! ” ® 
Each  saying  is  appropriate  to  the  moment,  neither  is  absolute, 
nor  significant  of  a permanent  character,  or  inalienable  office, 
or  indefeasible  function,  but  is  through  and  through  conditional, 
and  relevant  to  the  context.  Peter,  so  far  forth  as  he  would 
dissuade  Christ  from  His  supreme  act  of  sacrifice,  is  Satan, 
an  enemy  and  tempter  ; so  far  forth  as  he  confesses  the 
highest  truth  as  to  Christ,  has  committed  to  him  by  Christ  the 

^ Matt,  X.  5 ff.  2 Matt.  xvi.  19.  ® Matt.  xvi.  21-23. 


CHRIST  THE  IDEAL  WHICH  IT  REALIZES. 


519 


“ keys  of  the  kingdom.”  Both  must  be  conditional,  or  both 
absolute  ; but  it  were  hardly  reasonable  to  conceive  Peter 
as  through  all  time  filling  the  incompatible  offices  of  Satan 
and  the  Keeper  of  the  keys.  And  so  this  instance  but  em- 
phasizes the  truth.  Here  is  a kingdom  without  any  political 
framework,  without  any  machinery  of  chartered  officials,  or 
spheres  of  “covenanted  mercies,”  or  “recognized  channels,” 
or  “authorized  instruments  of  grace,”  but  composed  of  holy 
men,  distinguished  by  their  love  and  ministry,  extended  by 
the  preaching  of  the  Word,  and  the  persuasive  influence  of 
spiritual  character.  It  represents  a unity  which  no  type  of 
polity  can  create  or  express,  and  which  varied  and  even 
dissimilar  polities  need  not  break  up  nor  dissolve.  It  is 
visible,  yet  invisible  ; all  its  springs,  motives,  ends,  the  souls 
in  whieh  it  lives,  the  God  who  reigns  through  the  conscience 
and  the  conscience  in  which  God  reigns,  are  all  unseen  ; but 
all  its  evidences  and  fruits,  the  evils  it  cures,  the  good  it  does, 
the  beneficences  it  works,  arc  seen.  Paul  defined  it  through  its 
distinctive  elements  once  for  all : “ The  kingdom  of  God  is  not 
meat  and  drink,  but  righteousness  and  peace  and  joy  in  the 
Holy  Ghost.”  ^ If  we  seek  its  nearest  analogy,  we  shall  find 
it  in  the  visible  invisible  Church  of  the  Reformers  ; if  we  seek 
its  deepest  contrast,  where  is  this  likelier  to  be  found  than  in 
the  canonized  offices  of  bodies  sacerdotal  and  ecclesiastical  ? 


§ III.— The  Apostolic  Idea  of  the  Church. 

We  come  now  to  the  more  familiar  and  distinctively 
Apostolic  name  for  the  Society  of  Christ — the  Church.  It 
occurs  in  the  Acts  and  the  Epistles,  including  the  Apocalypse, 
exactly  the  same  number  of  times  as  kingdom  in  the  Gospels, 
112  ; while  kingdom  appears  in  only  29  cases.  This  seems 
to  indicate  either  a change  of  idea  or  a change  of  term  due  to 
a change  of  soil.  But  the  latter  could  not  happen  without  the 

* Rom.  xiv.  17. 


520 


THE  ECCLESIA  OF  THE  JEW  AND  GREEK. 


former  also  happening  in  some  degree.  However,  our  first 
concern  is  with  its  meaning,  which  will  also  help  us  to  see  the 
reason  of  its  later  extensive  use.  In  the  LXX.  eKKXrja-ta  had 
translated  the  Hebrew  Kahal^  the  congregation  or  assembly  of 
the  people  ; in  Greek  it  was  the  assembly  of  the  enfranchized 
and  qualified  citizens  met  to  transact  the  affairs  of  the  city 
or  state.  Into  the  New  Testament  usage  both  Hebrew  and 
Greek  elements  entered,  but,  owing  to  associations  and  ex- 
perience, the  Greek  were  much  more  potent  than  the  Hebrew. 
It  has  a double  application — a local  or  particular,  and  an 
illocal  or  universal ; but  in  both  cases  the  emphasis  falls  on 
the  community — the  people — the  constituents,  as  it  were,  of 
the  society,  rather  than  the  constituted  agencies.  The  local 
use  admits  of  the  plural,  but  the  illocal  of  the  singular  only  ^ ; 
and  in  our  interpretation  of  the  term  it  will  be  easiest  to 
proceed  from  the  concrete  and  definite  to  the  larger  and 
more  comprehensive  sense. 

i.  The  local  iicK\7}a[ai  were  essentially  societies  of  the 
enfranchized  or  saved.  Paul  addressed  his  Epistles,  so  far 
as  they  were  not  directly  personal,  to  the  collective  body  or 
Church,  which  is  described,  now  as  “ all  the  beloved  of  God,” 
now  as  “those  sanctified  in  Christ  Jesus,”  now  as  “ saints,”  or 
as  “ called  saints,”  and  again  as  “ the  faithful  brethren.”  ^ The 
ministers  are  only  once  specified,^  and  not  as  intermediaries 
or  a necessity  to  the  being  of  the  Church.  The  very  purpose 
of  his  great  Epistles  is  to  instruct  or  persuade  free  and 
autonomous  societies.  Each  body  is  a unit,  but  its  unity  is 
not  secured  by  any  office  ; it  is  rather  because  it  is  a body 

^ The  local  usage  is  very  instructive.  In  cities  we  have  the  singular,  as 
the  Church  in  Jerusalem,  Acts  ii.  47,  v.  ii,  viii.  i ; Ephesus,  Acts  xx.  17; 
Caesarea,  Acts  xviii.  22 ; Corinth,  i Cor.  i.  2,  2 Cor.  i.  i : but  in  districts 
we  have,  as  a rule,  the  plural,  as  the  Churches  of  Syria  and  Cilicia,  Acts  xv. 
41  ; of  Galatia,  i Cor.  xvi.  i.  Gal.  i.  2 ; of  Judaea,  Gal.  i.  22 ; of  Asia,  i Cor. 
xvi.  19;  of  Macedonia,  2 Cor.  viii.  i.  In  Acts  ix.  31  we  have  an  excep- 
tional usage,  which  is  the  more  interesting  because  of  its  difference  from 
the  Pauline  ; cf.  Gal.  i.  22. 

* Rom.  i.  7 ; I Cor.  i.  2 2 Cor.  i.  i Eph.  i.  i ; Col.  i.  i.  • Phil,  i,  i. 


ITS  CHARACTERISTICS  IN  PAULINE  EPISTLES.  52 1 


that  it  has  many  members  with  varied  ministries.'  The  lists 
of  these  are  significant  ; they  represent  preaching,  teaching, 
and  various  beneficences,  but  nothing  sacerdotal,  no  sanctity 
peculiar  to  the  office.  The  argument  in  First  Corinthians 
is  specially  striking.  God  has  set  in  His  Church  apostles, 
prophets,  teachers,  miracles,  gifts ; but  there  is  something 
more  excellent  than  these,  without  which  these  are  but 
vacant  things — the  love  that  never  faileth.  Each  Church 
was  a brotherhood,  for  all  were  sons  of  God,^  yet  each  was 
a legislative  and  judicial  body.  The  judgment  of  a majority 
was  efficient  to  punish,^  and  “ a spirit  of  meekness  ” was  held 
necessary  to  true  discipline.'^  In  an  aggravated  case  Paul 
seeks  to  have  his  judgment  executed,  not  independently  of 
the  Church,  but  through  it.^  Commendatory  epistles  were 
given  by  the  Church  ® ; charities  and  gifts  were  its  common 
act.^  If  the  Church  had  a representative,  it  was  by  election, 
XeipoTovrjOeh  vTTo  tmv  iKK\7](7CMV.^  And  in  these  respects  the 
Church  is  in  Acts  as  it  is  in  the  Pauline  Epistles.  The 
election  of  Matthias  to  the  place  of  Judas  was  by  the  brethren.® 
The  seven  deacons  were  chosen  by  the  whole  multitude.'®  It 
was  the  Church  in  Jerusalem  which  sent  forth  Barnabas  as 
far  as  Antioch."  It  was  before  the  same  Church  collectively 
(ttSv  to  irXr^Oos;)  that  Barnabas  and  Paul  declared  what  God 
had  done  through  them,  and  it  was  “ the  Apostles  and  Elders, 
with  the  whole  Church  ” (auv  6\p  ry  iKtcXyala)  which  selected 
delegates  to  bear  their  message  to  Antioch.'®  The  Church 
was  thus  “ the  multitude  of  those  who  believed,”  or  “ all  who 
believed,”  or  “ the  multitude  of  disciples,”  constituting  its 
officers,  not  constituted  by  them.  Power,  authority,  was  in 


^ Rom.  xii.  4-8  ; I Cor.  xii.  12-28. 

* Gal.  iii.  26-28. 

* 2 Cor.  ii.  6. 

* Gal.  vi.  I. 

* I Cor.  V.  3-7. 

® 2 Cor.  iii.  i. 

^ Phil.  iv.  15-20  ; 2 Cor.  viii.  1-8,  ix.  i,  6-14. 


* 2 Cor.  viii.  19. 

• Acts  i.  1 5-26, 

Acts  vi.  5. 

Acts  xi.  22, 

^ Acts  XV.  12,  22. 

^3  Acts  ii,  44,  iv.  32,  vi.  2, 
xix.  18. 


522 


THE  CHURCH  AS  LOCAL  AND  ILLOCAL. 


the  society,  not  in  its  ministers.  And  here  we  may  under- 
stand one  of  the  two  cases  where  Jesus  speaks  of  the  Church.^ 
The  address  is  to  the  disciples  on  offences  between  brethren. 
First,  He  says,  the  sufferer  is  to  reprove  the  sinner  alone  ; if 
the  sinner  will  not  listen,  two  witnesses  are  to  be  taken  ; if  he 
still  refuses  to  hear,  the  Church  is  to  be  told  ; if  he  refuse  to 
hear  the  Church,  he  is  to  be  treated  as  a “ heathen  man  and  a 
publican.”  Now,  Church  is  here  used  in  its  strict  local  sense  ; 
it  is  a single  society,  and  authority  is  said  to  reside  in  it,  not 
in  any  office  or  officers.  And  it  is  of  the  Church  in  this  sense, 
not  of  the  Apostles  as  a special  official  body,  that  Christ  uses 
the  words  : “ What  things  soever  ye  shall  bind  on  the  earth 
shall  be  bound  in  heaven  ; and  what  things  soever  you  shall 
loose  on  the  earth  shall  be  loosed  in  heaven.”  And  it  is  to 
a similar  body,  the  Church  he  had  built  on  the  foundation, 
‘'which  is  Jesus  Christ,”  that  Paul  said,  “Ye  are  God’s 
temple,”  “ the  Spirit  of  God  dwells  in  you.”  ^ The  most  gracious 
sanctities,  the  severest  authorities,  the  highest  dignities  belonged 
to  the  Church,  not  through  any  official  priesthood — for  there 
was  none— but  through  the  personal  relation  to  Christ  of  the 
men  who  formed  it,  and  His  presence  in  their  midst. 

ii.  The  ideal  of  the  local  is  realized  in  the  illocal  Church, 
and  we  must  understand  it  before  we  can  really  measure  the 
dream  of  the  newborn  faith  with  the  proud  creations  of  the 
historical  religion.  Within  the  New  Testament  thought  is  not 
stationary,  and  the  great  example  of  progressive  enrichment  is 
the  idea  of  the  Church.  In  the  earlier  Pauline  Epistles  the 
actual  Christians  fill  the  foreground  ; but  the  later  may  be 
said  to  live  and  move  and  have  their  being  in  the  Church, 
ideal  and  illocal.  The  development  begins  with  an  individual 
Church,  but  ends  with  a universal ; thought,  conditioned  by 
experience,  starts  with  a unit,  but  works  towards  a unity.  At 
first  we  have  what  may  be  termed  a mia-ecclesia,  but  at  last  a 
mone-ecclesia,  and  these  are  at  once  sequents  and  opposites. 

^ Matt,  xviii.  15-20.  * I Cor.  iii.  16 


DISTINCTION  OF  MIA-  AND  MONE-ECCLESIA.  523 


The  Church  of  Jerusalem  is  both  one  and  the  whole  ^ ; the 
Church  of  the  Ephesian  and  the  Colossian  Epistles  is  also  one 
and  the  whole  ^ ; but  the  former  is  single  and  individual,  while 
the  latter  is  collective  and  universal.  The  one  is  a unit,  which 
difference  may  break  and  dissolve  ; the  other  a unity,  which 
variety  will  only  help  to  realize.  If  the  one  had  attempted  to 
become  the  only  Church,  no  Church  universal  would  have 
been  possible  ; it  was  through  the  manifold  of  experience  that 
the  higher  unity  was  gained. 

It  is  by  Paul  that  the  notion  of  the  mone-,  as  distinguished 
from  the  mia-ecclesia,  is  expressed  and  explicated ; it  is 
doubtful  if  apart  from  him  it  have  any  representative  in 
Apostolic  literature.^  He  appears  as  the  very  spirit  of  differ- 
ence and  independence,  but  he  is  the  Apostle  of  comprehen- 
sion and  unity.  While  his  controversy  with  the  Judaic  party 
is  most  intense,  his  relations  to  the  Jewish  Church  are  most 
brotherly.  He  recognizes  a distinction  of  Christians,  both  as 
regards  race  and  place,^  but  he  recognizes  no  distinction  in 
brotherhood,  and  only  the  more  serves  where  he  is  the  less 
loved.^  In  experience  the  KoivMvla  was  larger  than  the  local 
eKKXrjaiai,  and  harmonized  their  differences,®  but  in  thought 
the  multitude  were  so  combined  as  to  constitute  a richer  whole. 
The  point  where  we  can  best  study  the  relation  of  the  real 
and  ideal,  the  local  and  illocal,  in  the  notion  of  the  Church,  is 
where  Paul  first  elaborates  the  image  of  the  body  of  Christ.’' 
He  had  first  used  it  of  the  local  Church,  as  he  had  before  used 
the  images  of  the  tilled  field  and  the  Temple  ® ; the  local  was  a 
microcosm,  the  image  and  mirror  of  the  universal.  The 
fellowship  of  the  body  of  Christ  suggested  the  figure  of 
the  Church  as  His  body  ; union  in  the  act  of  remembrance 

^ Actsv.  II,  viii.  I,  3.  Cf.  Gal.  i.  13;  i Cor.  xv.  9. 

2 Eph.  i.  22,  iii.  10,  21  ; Col.  i.  18,  24. 

3 In  Acts  the  only  verse  which  has  it  is  Pauline,  xx.  28.  Of  course  the 
idea  may  be  found  elsewhere,  but  not  under  the  form  of  the  Church. 

^ I Thess.  ii.  14;  Gal.  i.  22 ; i Cor.  xvi.  19;  Rom,  xvi.  4. 

^ I Cor.  X 32,  xvi.  1-4  ; 2 Cor.  ix.  i ff. 

* Gal.  ii.  9.  ^ I Cor.  x.  17.  v ® I Cor.  iii  9. 


524  THE  BODY  THE  MINISTRY  OF  ITS  MEMBERS. 

involved  the  unity  of  the  united.  The  unity  was,  therefore,  one 
of  persons  ; what  all  received  made  all  who  received  it  one. 
But  did  this  ideal  agree  with  the  reality  ? In  the  Corinthian 
Church  there  were  manifold  differences  and  even  divisions  ; 
parties  were  formed,  each  with  a name  as  a symbol.^  There 
had  been  grave  sins,  involving  serious  discipline  ^ ; disorder 
had  reigned  in  the  assembly,  even  on  the  most  solemn 
occasions  ^ ; violent  strife  had  raged  as  to  the 
The  actual  condition  suggested  by  contrast  the  ideal,  and  he  pre- 
sented the  one  as  a rebuke  and  warning  to  the  other.  He  called 
upon  this  much-divided  society  to  conceive  itself  through  its 
ideal.  It  was  a unity,  an  organism,  a body,  the  body  of  Christ.'^ 
Its  life  was  one,  but  its  parts  were  many  ; the  meanest  part  was 
as  necessary  as  the  noblest,  and  so  neither  could  dispense  with 
the  other,  while  the  dignity  of  the  whole  dignified  the  least  noble 
member.  The  essential  idea  is  that  Christ  is  so  in  all,  so  needs 
all,  so  works  through  all,  that  He  is  the  life  of  the  body,  and 
the  body  the  realization  of  His  life.  Each  is  necessary  to  Him, 
but  He  to  all.  Yet,  while  Paul  explains  the  unity  through 
Christ,  who  is  the  organizing  idea,  he  explains  the  differences 
between  the  members  through  the  action  of  God.  He  has  set 
in  the  Church  apostles,  prophets,  teachers,  so  bestowing  certain 
XapLCFfiara.  He  has  created  thus  the  differences;  but  why? 
With  a view  to  the  common  good,  to  the  creation  of  things 
more  excellent  than  themselves — the  love  that  never  faileth, 
the  spirit  that  induces  men  to  live  as  if  the  God  who  is  love 
were  incarnate  in  the  men.  The  next  use  of  the  figure  is 
similar.®  The  many  are  one  body  in  Christ  and  severally 
members  one  of  another,  and  the  difference  of  gifts  is  traced 
to  God,  each  being  given  in  order  to  the  efficiency  and  unity 
of  the  whole.  The  significant  things  in  both  cases  are  these  : 
— As  regards  offices  the  two  lists  are  not  identical.  Apostles 


^ I Cor.  i.  12,  iii.  4, 
* I Cor.  V.  I ft. 

® I Cor.  xi.  17  ff. 


* 1 Cor.  xiv.  26. 

* I Cor.  xii.  i2-xiii.  13- 

* Rom.  xii.  4 ff. 


THE  CHURCH  UNIVERSAL  AND  IDEAL. 


525 


come  first  in  the  one  list,  but  do  not  appear  at  all  in  the 
other  ; whence  it  follows  that  no  fixed  system  of  orders  was 
necessary  to  the  body  or  known  to  the  Church.  Further,  no 
member  or  person  appears  as  possessed  of  any  sacerdotal  name 
or  office  or  function,  either  with  respect  to  the  body  or  its 
activities.  Again,  the  discussion  introduces  passages  that  in 
the  enthusiasm  of  humanity  surpass  all  others  in  the  Pauline 
writings.  The  Christ  that  inhabits  the  body  is  the  Christ 
of  the  Beatitudes  and  the  Beneficences  of  the  Gospels. 
Sacramental  grace  is  not  here,  nor  the  orders  that  are  its 
channels,  nor  the  political  organism  which  defines  the  sphere 
of  “ the  covenanted  mercies.”  What  we  have  here  is  the  grace 
and  truth  which  dwelt  in  Him  become  active  and  efficient 
in  the  men  who  at  His  call  and  through  love  to  Him  have 
gathered  into  societies,  that  they  may  the  better,  as  His  incar- 
nated and  organized  Spirit,  continue  His  work  among  men. 

iii.  In  the  later  Epistles  this  idea  is  expanded  into  a sub- 
lime universalism,  which  transcends  time  as  much  as  space. 
The  thought  of  the  Apostle  has  risen  above  its  old  antitheses,^ 
and  now  contemplates  all  things  through  the  ideal  Christ. 
In  Him,  through  Him,  and  for  Him  were  all  things  created  ; 
in  Him  they  are  so  constituted  as  to  be  an  order,  a system.^ 
As  He  made,  He  redeems  ; His  coming  is  no  accident,  or 
after- thought ; but  as  He  ever  was  with  the  Father,  man  has 
for  the  Father  ever  been  in  Him.  It  is  through  this  new 
standpoint,  and  its  vaster  and  more  synthetic  outlook,  that  the 
notion  of  the  mystical  Church  first  emerges.  It  is  conceived 
more  as  an  ideal,  yet  without  ceasing  to  be  real,  and  is 
personified  in  an  altogether  new  way.  The  Church,  personal, 
yet  universal,  stands  over  against  the  personal  yet  universal 
Christ ; He  is  the  Husband,  it  is  the  wife  ; He  is  the  Head,  it 
is  the  body  ; He  exercises  authority,  it  lives  in  subjection  and 
obedience  ; He  loves  the  Church,  gives  Himself  for  it,  sancti- 
fies it,  exalts  it,  makes  it  beautiful,  holy,  blameless.^  These 
^ Cf.  supra,  pp.  316-320.  2 Col.  i.  16,  17.  ^ j^ph.  v.  23-27. 


526  GOD  REFLECTED  IN  HIS  IDEAL  SOCIETY. 

attributes,  the  affections  exercised  and  received,  the  ideal 
identity  and  adequacy  to  each  other  of  the  personal  Christ 
and  the  personalized  Church,^  are  new,  though  it  may  be  only 
in  the  sense  of  being  more  explicitly  developed,  elements  in 
the  Pauline  theology.  With  the  emergence  of  the  new, 
certain  old  elements  have  either  retreated  into  the  back- 
ground or  been  so  qualified  as  to  appear  in  changed  propor- 
tions. Christ  is  not  come  as  the  second  Adam  or  new  Head 
of  the  race,  but  as  the  Husband  and  Head  of  the  Church  ; 
He  does  not  die  for  all,  but  gives  Himself  up  for  the  Church, 
or  becomes  an  offering  and  a sacrifice  to  God  for  us.^  Less 
emphasis  falls  on  the  mind  and  acts  of  man,  more  on  the  will 
and  election  of  God  ; instead  of  the  justification  by  faith  and 
the  reconciliation  with  God  of  the  polemical  Epistles,  we 
have  the  creation  of  a justified  and  reconciled  humanity,  a 
happy,  harmonious,  and  holy  society  made  after  the  mind  of 
God,  constituted  by  Christ,  filled,  guided,  united  by  His 
Spirit.  Unless  these  new  elements  and  points  of  view  be 
borne  in  mind,  the  Church  of  the  later  Epistles  cannot  be 
construed.  It  stands  as  the  symbol  of  the  completed  work 
of  Christ,  of  all  that  God  through  it  had  meant  to  accomplish  ; 
by  it  was  unfolded  the  mystery  of  His  will  ; in  it  was  mani- 
fested, not  simply  to  earth,  but  to  “ principalities  and  powers 
in  heavenly  places,”  His  “ manifold  wisdom.”  ^ The  attributes 
and  achievements  of  this  Church,  then,  are  so  vast  that  no 
single  institution,  or  any  number  of  institutions,  or  even  the 
whole  field  of  human  history  can  exhaust  its  contents,  or  be 
the  arena  of  its  full  unfolding.  It  represents  the  summing 
up,  or  bringing  to  a unity  in  Christ  all  things  in  heaven  and 
upon  earth  ^ ; and  is  presented  under  a series  of  images  that 
strive)  as  it  were,  to  break  the  bonds  of  place  and  sense 
and  reach  immensity.  But  this  “ Gloriosissima  Civitas  Dei  ” 
struggles  towards  eternity  through  time  ; the  men  addressed 

® Eph.  iii.  lo. 

* Eph.  i.  lo. 


1 Eph.  V.  28-33, 
* Eph.  V.  2,  25. 


ALL  ITS  NOTES  ETHICAL  AND  SPIRITUAL.  52; 

are  members  of  it ; yet,  as  if  to  show  how  the  Apostle  was 
possessed  with  the  universalism  and  the  idealisms  of  the 
Church,  he  never  once  in  Ephesians  uses  the  term  in  its  local 
or  realistic  sense.  Its  members  are  “ the  called  ” — i.e.,  they 
are  conceived,  not  in  their  temporal,  but  in  their  eternal 
relations ; and  the  notes  that  ought  to  distinguish  them 
are  “ lowliness,”  “ meekness,”  “ forbearance,”  “ longsuffering,” 
“ love,”  “ unity,”  “ peace  ” ^ — social  virtues  all,  not  sacerdotal 
or  ecclesiastical.  In  their  collective  being  they  ought  to  be 
an  ideal  society,  for  they  are  “ one  body  and  one  spirit,”  have 
one  hope,  “ one  Lord,  one  faith,  one  baptism,  one  God  and 
Father  of  all,  who  is  over  all  and  through  all,  and  in  all.” 
The  unities  are  all,  as  it  were,  universals,  as  broad  as  the 
sovereignty  of  God,  as  penetrative  as  His  ubiquity,  as  all 
distributed  as  His  immanence.  And  in  this  society  every 
member  owes  his  place  and  his  grace  to  the  gift  of  Christ, 
who  filleth  all  in  all.  And  with  reference  to  the  perfecting 
of  His  saints,  in  order  to  the  edifying  of  His  body.  He  has 
created  agencies — apostles,  prophets,  pastors,  and  teachers  ; 
but  these  are  persons,  not  offices  ; men  created  of  God,  not 
orders  instituted  of  men.  And  the  edification  of  the  body  is 
a growth  in  love,  so  towards  Christ  that  the  nearer  it  comes  to 
Him  the  more  He  possesses  it.  Within  this  Epistle,  then,  the 
Church  is  so  conceived  that  the  notes  of  what  is  called  Catho- 
licism are  all  absent  ; the  Church,  in  the  degree  that  it  is 
mystical,  knows  no  special  polity,  consents  to  no  institutional 
forms,  is  distinguished  by  no  sacrosanct  orders,  and  has  no 
single  note  that  can  with  any  veracity  of  speech  be  termed 
sacerdotal.  The  Church  is  constituted  by  God  in  Christ,  and 
is  composed  of  “ the  called,”  “ the  saints,”  the  men  of  love  and 
peace.  To  it  no  priest  is  necessary,  or  his  “ instruments  of 
grace  ” ; grace  is  the  direct  gift  of  Christ ; what  fills  the  body 
is  His  Spirit ; what  moves,  unites,  and  enlarges  it  is  His 
love. 


^ Eph.  iv.  I ff. 


528 


COINCIDENCE  OF  CHURCH  AND  KINGDOM. 


§ IV.— The  Church  as  the  Kingdom  and  People 

OF  God. 

If  we  have  rightly  construed  the  Church  in  its  later  Pauline 
or  mystical  sense,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  understand  its  rela- 
tion to  the  kingdom.  The  kingdom  is  the  Church  viewed 
from  above  ; the  Church  is  the  kingdom  seen  from  below. 
In  the  kingdom  the  society  is  conceived  through  its  creative 
and  informing  will  ; in  the  Church  the  will  is  conceived 
through  the  created  and  informed  society.  In  the  kingdom 
the  king  is  emphasized  ; in  the  Church  the  citizens  : in  the 
one  case  we  see  man  as. he  ought  to  be  before  God — poor  in 
spirit,  seeking  His  righteousness,  doing  His  will,  humble, 
teachable,  without  conventional  goodness,  good  only  in  spirit 
and  in  truth  ; in  the  other  case  we  see  man  as  he  ought  to  be 
for  God  in  society — possessed  of  social  virtues,  exercising  all 
the  beneficences  and  charities  that  redeem  and  adorn  life  as 
man  lives  it  with  man.  Hence  Jesus  preaches  the  kingdom — 
as  King  declares  Himself,  proclaims  the  kingdom  consti- 
tuted by  the  presence  of  the  King;  but  the  Apostles,  by 
founding  Churches,  edify  the  Church,  call  men  to  become 
saints,  and  to  enter  into  the  society  of  the  saved.  Hence, 
too,  come  the  very  different  images  under  which  the  two  are 
presented  : the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  as  a sower  who  goeth 
forth  to  sow,  or  like  treasure  hid  in  a field,  or  like  a mer- 
chantman seeking  goodly  pearls,  or  like  a net  cast  into  the 
sea,  or  like  a seed,  or  like  leaven  ; but  the  Church  is  a house,  or 
a temple,  or  a body, — i.e.^  the  kingdom  represents  the  idea  of  a 
creative  will,  and  man’s  relation  to  it  as  one  of  search,  or  its 
action  in  man  as  one  of  growth  ; but  the  Church  represents  a 
structure,  the  association  of  once  unrelated  parts,  the  organiza- 
tion or  combination  of  once  dead  atoms  into  a living  whole. 
The  coincidence  of  the  two  ideas  is  seen  here  : the  plan  after 
which  the  Church  is  built  is  the  will  of  God,  or  the  ideal  of 


AS  IS  CHRIST,  SO  IS  HIS  CHURCH.  529 

the  kingdom,  while  the  means  by  which  the  kingdom  is 
realized  is  the  Church  and  the  Churches.  But  this  involves 
the  correlation  of  the  two  ideas  : the  kingdom  is  the  immanent 
Church,  and  the  Church  is  the  explicated  kingdom,  and 
nothing  alien  to  either  can  be  in  the  other.  The  kingdom  is 
the  Church  expressed  in  the  terms  and  mind  and  person  of 
its  Founder ; the  Church  is  the  kingdom  done  into  living 
souls  and  the  society  they  constitute. 

•This  idea  of  the  Church,  as  essentially  the  new  humanity, 
created  and  penetrated  by  Christ,  as  little  dependent  for  its 
being  on  specific  forms  of  polity  as  was  the  old  humanity, 
might  be  proved  and  illustrated  from  many  sides.  For  ex- 
ample, this  notion  of  the  ideal  universal  Church  is  distinctively 
Pauline,  and  belongs  to  the  very  texture  of  his  thought.  The 
old  mankind  is  an  organism  because  of  Adam  ; the  new  is  a 
body  because  of  Christ.  Each  is  as  its  Head  is  : the  old  is 
earthly,  like  the  first  man  ; the  new  is  spiritual,  like  the  Second 
Man, — the  one  partakes  in  Adam’s  sin  ; the  other  is  possessed 
of  Christ’s  righteousness.  The  mind  of  Adam  penetrates  his 
race  ; the  Spirit  of  Christ  dwells  in  His  body.  And  His  Spirit 
is  the  son’s ; the  Church  is  the  filial  society,  man  become  son 
of  God  through  the  Son  of  God  who  became  man.  And  in 
this  sense  it  continues  the  Incarnation — i.e.,  incorporates  the 
ideal  Sonship  which  Christ  realized.  The  Church,  as  a body, 
is  not  material,  but  spiritual,  just  as  is  its  Head.  The  old  race 
was  a aMjJba  '\\rv^iK.6v,  but  the  new  race  is  a awfjua  TrvevjubaTt/cop, 
with  all  the  qualities  and  characteristics  of  Him  who  is  by 
pre-eminence  the  'irvevfjia  ^wottolovv.  To  have  the  Spirit  of 
Christ  is  to  be  His.  “ As  many  as  are  led  by  the  Spirit  of 
God,  they  are  the  sons  of  God.”  And  “ the  Spirit  itself 
beareth  witness  with  our  spirit,  that  we  are  the  children  of 
God.”  ^ And  what  are  these  children  in  their  unity  but  the 
continued  incarnation  of  sonship  ? And  does  not  this  mean 
that  as  the  Head  of  the  Church  is  spiritual,  and  its  indwelling 
^ Rom.  viii.  14-16. 


34 


530 


CHRIST’S  CHURCH  IS  HIS  PEOPLE. 


power  the  Spirit,  so  it  is  constituted  of  spirits,  and  spiritual  in 
all  its  constituent  elements. 

But  the  conclusion  which  follows  from  this  discussion  of  the 
Pauline  idea  is  only  defined  and  illustrated  by  the  usage  of 
the  other  Apostolic  writers.  In  Hebrews  i/cK\r]aLa  is  used 
only  as  in  the  LXX."^;  in  Peter  not  at  all;  in  James  and 
John  and  the  Apocalypse  only  in  its  local  sense.  But  in  its 
place  Hebrews,  Peter,  and  the  Apocalypse  have  the  idea  of 
the  people  ; they  conceive  the  new  through  the  old  society  ; 
the  new  is  a royal  priesthood,  a holy  nation,  God’s  people  with 
His  law  written  in  their  hearts,  and  all  the  fleshly  sacrifices, 
official  priesthoods,  and  outer  ceremonies  of  the  old  abolished 
by  being  translated  into  the  spiritual  realities  they  typified. 
The  emphasis,  again,  falls  upon  the  people  ; they  are  a whole 
before  God,  needing  no  officials  to  constitute  their  unity,  or 
communicate  grace  by  special  instruments  of  the  ancient  kind. 
These  writers  know  nothing  of  the  notion  that  the  Church 
depends  for  its  being  on  a special  polity  ; to  them  such  a 
notion  would  have  seemed  like  an  attempt  to  change  the  new 
law  into  the  old.  They  would  have  found  all  the  elements 
essential  to  it,  all  the  ideas  that  most  distinguish  it — its  orders, 
its  authorized  channels,  its  covenanted  and  uncovenanted 
mercies,  its  priestly  claims,  and  its  ceremonial  sanctities — 
in  the  law  they  had  escaped  from,  whose  burdens  they  and 
their  fathers  had  not  been  able  to  bear.  And  they  would  have 
added  : the  Church  is  the  people  of  God  ; wherever  they  are 
He  is,  and  the  Church  through  Him  in  them  ; and  as  God’s 
are  a free  people,  He  allows  them  to  organize  their  own 
polities,  the  best  polities  always  being  those  most  deeply 
rooted  in  love,  and  so  most  creative  of  the  spiritual  and 
redeeming  graces. 

1 Heb.  ii.  12,  xii.  23.  In  the  latter  case  the  use  is  figurative,  but  clearly 
based  on  the  Old  Testament. 


WHAT  AUTHORITY  HAVE  ITS  MINISTERS? 


531 


§ V.— The  Church  and  its  Organization. 

So  much  has  been  said  as  to  the  New  Testament  idea  of 
the  Church  that  we  can  give  but  little  space  to  the  questions, 
quite  distinct  yet  related,  connected  with  the  organization  and 
administration  of  the  Churches.  Only  two  points  need  be 
noted — the  one  concerns  the  Apostles  and  the  Apostolic  Suc- 
cession, the  other  the  character  and  function  of  the  ministry 
as  such.  The  question  connected  with  the  first  is  this  : Did 
the  Apostles  constitute  and  consecrate  successors  with  a view 
to  the*  transmission  of  Apostolic  authority  or  powers  along 
given  lines  to  given  orders,  and  to  these  only  ? The  question 
connected  with  the  second  point  is  this  : Is  the  New  Testament 
ministry  a priesthood  ? As  to  these  all  we  can  do  is  to  state 
conclusions. 

I.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Christ  appointed  twelve  Apostles, 
that  the  number  twelve  bore  an  ideal  significance,^  and  that 
they  had  certain  specific  and  defined  functions.^  But  that 
they  were  to  create  or  did  create  a special  order  of  successors  ; 
that  they  were  empowered  to  transmit,  or  did  as  a matter 
of  fact  either  profess  or  endeavour  to  transmit  Apostolical 
authority, — are  positions,  to  say  the  least,  quite  incapable  of 
historical  proof;  and  to  be  not  proven  is,  in  claims  of  this 
sort,  to  be  found  not  true.  The  Apostles  were  preachers  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  messengers  of  Christ,  witnesses  of 
His  resurrection,  but  ordination  is  never  described  either  as 
their  special  function,  or  as  their  peculiar  and  exclusive 
practice.^  The  hands  laid  on  Paul  were  not  those  of  Apostles, 
but  first  those  of  Ananias,'^  a man  otherwise  absolutely  un- 
known, then  those  of  the  prophets  and  teachers  at  Antioch  ; ^ 
and  he  throughout  strenuously  maintained  that  he  was  made 

^ Mact.  xix.  28.  2 Acts  i.  8-22  ; Matt,  xxviii.  19-20  ; Luke  xxiv.  48. 

3 The  act  and  authority  in  ordination  seems  to  have  been  rather  the 
Churches’  or  their  delegates’  than  the  Apostles’.  Cf.  2 Cor.  viii.  19  ; 
Acts  xiv.  23,  xiii.  2,  3,  i.  15,  16,  23-26. 

^ Acts  ix.  10,  17.  * Acts  xiii.  1-3, 


532  THE  APOSTLES  AND  APOSTOLICAL  SUCCESSION. 


an  Apostle  neither  from  men  nor  through  man.^  Barnabas 
was  sent  forth,  not  by  the  Apostles,  but  by  the  Church.^ 
But,  indeed,  what  does  the  term  “Apostles”  mean?  No 
corporate  body,  no  college  of  ordaining  officers,  no  exclusive 
order,  but  simply  certain  persons  whose  special  function  was 
the  ministry  of  the  Word.^  Hence  of  the  men  Jesus  appointed, 
James,  Peter,  and  John  are  the  only  three  ever  named  outside 
the  Gospels  ^ ; and  for  the  history  of  the  Church  and  its  or- 
ganization only  the  two  latter  are  of  real  significance,  and 
even  their  significance  is  personal  rather  than  official.®  James, 
the  brother  of  the  Lord,  appears  as  an  Apostle,®  though  he 
was  not  one  of  the  Twelve.  Paul  seems  to  associate  with 
himself  in  the  Apostleship,  Apollos,’’  Timothy,  and  Silvanus,® 
and  to  apply  the  name  to  Andronicus  and  Junia.®  The 
Apostles  were  therefore  no  fixed  order,  and  had  no  special 
governmental  functions — others  laid  on  hands  as  well  as  they  ; 
they  were  simply  messengers  and  representatives  of  Christ. 
He  preached,  so  did  they  ; by  preaching  Pie  established  His 
kingdom,  and  they  planted  Churches ; by  the  Word  they 
worked  their  wonders  and  did  their  work.  But  as  to  any 
transmission  of  authority  there  is  no  word,  nor  is  there  any 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  any  official  body  either  authorized 
or  able  to  transmit  it. 

^ Gal.  i.  I.  * Acts  xi.  22.  ® Acts  vi.  2,  4. 

^ Of  course,  Acts  i.  1-14  is  here  regarded  as  a piece  of  the  Gospel 
history ; it  is  simply  the  introduction  to  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  which 
really  begins  with  the  fifteenth  verse.  But  cf.  vi.  2. 

^ It  is  v^ery  significant  that  it  is  the  personal  eminence  and  influence,  not 
the  official  authority,  of  Peter,  James,  and  John  that  Paul  emphasizes  in 
the  narrative  that  describes  his  intercourse  with  them  (Gal.  ii.  6-10).  They 
were  alluded  to  by  name,  not  as  Apostles,  but  as  ot  doicovvTes  o-tvXoi  elvtu. 
Cf.  the  remarkable  way  in  which  he  at  once  distinguishes  and  co-ordinates 
himself  and  the  rest  of  the  Apostles  and  “ the  brethren  of  the  Lord, 
and  Cephas  ” (i  Cor.  ix.  5).  This  latitude  in  the  use  of  the  term  is  inex- 
plicable on  any  theory  of  the  corporate  being  and  authority  of  a defined 
Apostolical  body. 

® Gal.  i.  19. 

^ 1 Cor.  iv.  6,  9, 


® I Thess.  ii.  6.  Cf.  i.  I. 

® Rom.  xvi.  7. 


THE  NEW  MINISTRY  NO  PRIESTHOOD. 


533 


2.  But  the  other  point  is  more  fundamental.  It  has  been 
already  so  far  discussed  ^ that  we  need  only  say  here,  the  New 
Testament  ministry  is  not  a priesthood  ; in  no  single  feature, 
aspect,  or  office  has  it  a sacerdotal  character.  It  is  a small 
question  what  apostle,  prophet,  teacher,  bishop,  pastor,  pres- 
byter, deacon,  mean,  or  how  some  perished,  and  others 
survived,  and  how  in  the  process  of  survival  they  were 
changed  ; but  it  is  a profounder  question,  full  of  vaster  issues, 
how  into  those  that  survived  the  sacerdotal  idea  penetrated, 
and  by  changing  them  changed  the  character  of  the  religion 
through  and  through.  There  is  an  exact  correspondence 
between  the  ministerial  office  and  the  nature  of  the  religion, 
or  the  offices  of  the  Church  and  its  essential  character. 
Sacerdotalism  means  that  an  office  is  conceived  to  be  so 
sacrosanct,  and  so  necessary  to  man’s  worship  of  God  and 
God’s  access  to  man,  that  without  it  there  can  be  no  perfect 
worship  on  the  one  side,  and  no  adequate  or  regular  com- 
munication of  life  on  the  other.  It  means  that  the  priest, 
as  a priest,  and  not  as  a person,  and  his  instruments  as  his, 
or  as  used  by  him,  are  the  only  authorized  and  divinely 
constituted  media  through  which  God  reaches  man  and 
man  God,  or  through  which  the  recognized  and  approved 
intercourse  of  the  creature  with  the  Creator  can  proceed. 
Now,  in  the  New  Testament  no  such  ideas  are  associated 
with  the  ministry,  or  with  any  person  appointed  to  it. 
No  man  bears  the  priest’s  name,  or  professes  his  functions  ; 
the  studious  avoidance  of  the  name  by  men  who  were 
steeped  in  the  associations  of  sacerdotal  worship  is  most 
significant ; and  so  is  the  care  with  which  they  translate 
sacerdotal  customs  and  ideas  into  their  spiritual  antitypes.' 
The  priesthood  ceases  to  be  official  by  being  made  universal. 
The  life  of  the  communities  is  not  bound  by  any  priestly 
rules  or  observances,^  but  by  the  new  laws  of  love.  The 
Church  and  its  ministry,  therefore,  correspond  throughout  ; 

^ Supra^  p.  loi,  2 Gal.  iv.  9,  10;  Col.  ii.  16-23. 


534 


THE  MINISTRY  IS  AS  THE  CHURCH  IS. 


the  ministry  is  one  of  persuasion,  that  seeks  to  move  the  will 
through  the  conscience,  and  both  through  the  reason  and 
heart  ; that  cares  in  the  new  and  gracious  way  of  brotherhood 
for  the  poor,  the  sick,  the  ignorant,  the  suffering,  the  sinful, 
and  attempts  to  help,  to  love,  to  win  by  sweet  reasonableness  ; 
while  the  Church  is  a society  which  seeks  to  realize  the  beauti- 
ful ideal  of  a family  of  God,  or  a household  of  faith,  or  a 
brotherhood  of  man.  The  rise  of  the  sacerdotal  orders  marks 
a long  descent  from  the  Apostolic  age,  but  is  certainly  no 
thing  of  Apostolic  descent. 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  CHURCH  IN  THEOLOGY, 

§ I. — The  Church  and  its  Polity. 

ROM  the  discussion  as  to  the  idea  of  the  Church  in  the 


JL  New  Testament  two  positive  principles  may  be  de- 
duced : (i)  As  regards  material  character  the  Church  is  the 
people,  the  society  of  the  sons  of  God  ; and  (2)  as  regards 
formal  character  the  Church  is  described  in  theocratic,  ethical, 
and  social  terms,  but  not  in  sacerdotal  or  ceremonial.  What  is 
meant  by  the  first  is  that  the  Church  is  composed  of  those 
who  have  the  Spirit  of  the  Son  ; without  the  filial  Spirit  no 
man  can  be  within  the  filial  society,  but  all  are  within  the 
society  who  have  the  Spirit.  This  is  its  substance,  this  is  its 
essence — it  is  a family  constituted  by  the  younger  sons  of  God 
being  conformed  to  the  image  of  the  First-born.  What  is 
meant  by  the  second  position  is  that  this  society  is  a theocracy, 
governed  directly  by  its  Divine  and  Invisible  Head,  with  all 
the  relations  between  its  members  determined  by  their  relation 
to  Him.  The  society  of  the  sons  of  God  is  a family  of  brothers, 
where  each  loves  the  Father  supremely  and  his  brethren  as 
himself  The  material  character  is  expressed  by  the  term 
iKK\r)aLa,  and  the  formal  character  by  the  term  ^aaiXeia.  The 
kingdom  is  composed  of  free-born  or  enfranchized  men  ; the 
Church  is  ordered  and  organized  by  the  will  and  authority  of 
the  King  whose  love  founded  it,  whose  spirit  fills  and  guides, 
whose  life  quickens  and  whose  law  rules  all  its  members.  The 


536 


WHAT  IS  OF  THE  ESSE  OF  THE  CHURCH. 


citizens  who  constitute  the  eKK\rja[a  compose  the  Paatkeia,  but 
the  laws  of  the  j^ao-Ckeia  are  the  only  valid  and  imperative 
principles  constitutive  of  the  i/cKXTjaLa.  So  construed  God 
is  the  conception  determinative  of  the  Church  both  on  its 
material  and  formal  sides.  The  sons  must  be  as  is  the 
Father — holy  as  He  is  holy,  perfect  as  He  is  perfect ; the 
kingdom  must  be  as  the  King  — righteous  as  He  is  righteous, 
the  realm  where  His  will  is  law,  and  the  law  is  love. 

But  the  idea  of  the  Church  may  be  further  defined  and 
illustrated  by  being  placed  in  contrast  to  its  antithesis — the 
idea  that  is  here  called  by  courtesy  the  Catholic.  This  idea 
is  political  and  institutional ; but  its  polity  is  not  the  polity 
of  the  kingdom,  nor  are  its  constituent  members  the  whole 
society  of  the  sons  of  God.  We  need  not  here  carefully  define 
or  exhibit  in  their  mutually  destructive  negations  the  systems 
that  call  themselves  Catholicisms,  but  simply  select  what  is 
common  to  both — the  notion  that  a given  organization  or 
polity  is  necessary  to  the  very  being  of  the  Church.  The 
episcopate  is  “organically  necessary  to  the  structure  of  the 
visible  body  of  Christ,” — “ necessary  not  merely  to  its  dene  esse, 
but  to  its  esse"'  ^ The  society  so  organized  is  “ the  special  and 
covenanted  sphere  of  His  (the  Spirit’s)  regular  and  uniform 
operations.”  ^ The  Church,  used  in  this  strictly  political  sense 
and  confined  to  a special  body,  has  a finality  which  belongs  to 
its  very  essence,  “ expressed  in  the  once  for  all  delivered  faith, 
in  the  fulness  of  the  once  for  all  given  grace,  in  the  Visible 
Society  once  for  all  instituted,”  “ and  in  a once  for  all  em- 
powered and  commissioned  ministry.”^  By  virtue  of  the  first 
it  is  the  custodian  and  interpreter  of  the  truth  ; by  virtue  of 
the  second  it  possesses  the  Sacraments,  which  are  its  instru- 
ments for  the  communication  of  grace  ; because  of  the  third 
the  Church  is  a political  unity  into  which  man  must  be 

* Liddon,  “ A Father  in  Christ,”  p.  13  (2nd  ed.). 

* Mr.  Gore,  “Lux  Mundi,”  pp.  321,  322. 

® Mr.  Gore,  “ The  Church  and  the  Ministry,”  pp.  64,  65. 


TYPES  OF  POLITY  CIVIL  AND  ECCLESIASTICAL.  537 

incorporated  to  be  truly  and  effectually  saved  ; in  the  fourth 
“ the  instrument  of  unity  ” is  supplied,  “ and  no  man  can 
share  her  (the  Church’s)  fellowship  except  in  acceptance  of 
the  offices  of  her  ministry.”^  Now,  of  these  the  last  is  the 
greatest  and  most  essential  ; though  it  may  be  argued  that  all 
are  alike  necessary,  and  distinction  between  necessities  cannot 
be  drawn  ; yet  here  this  distinction  exists,  the  episcopal 
ministry  is  the  condition  through  which  the  other  things  are  ; 
it  is  primary,  they  are  secondary  and  sequent  ; without  it 
there  can  be  no  unity,  no  priesthood,  no  sacramental  grace,  no 
authoritative  transmission  and  definition  of  truth — in  a word, 
no  Church  ; with  it  these  things  cannot  but  be. 

Now,  is  this  a doctrine  which  even  approximately  ex- 
presses the  idea  of  the  New  Testament,  and  especially  the  mind 
of  Christ  as  to  the  Church  ? Does  it  do  even  the  remotest  sort 
of  justice  either  to  the  filial  society  on  the  one  hand,  or  its  theo- 
cratic form  on  the  other  ? Is  it  a theory  of  the  ministry  or  of 
the  community ; of  the  political  system  or  of  the  people  who 
live  under  it,  and  for  whose  good  it  exists  ; of  the  forms  under 
which  communion  is  decreed  to  be  possible,  or  of  the  saints 
who  hold  communion  ? The  question  as  to  the  relation 
between  the  various  factors  constitutive  of  the  State — the 
sovereign  and  the  citizens,  the  magistracy  and  the  people,  the 
polity  and  the  community — is  as  old  as  the  study  of  politics, 
and  it  is  as  native  and  as  necessary  in  the  ecclesiastical 
as  in  the  civil  sphere.  In  both  there  are  the  same  types 
of  political  theory,  involving  questions  identical  in  principle 
and  substance,  though  somewhat  different  in  form,  as  to 
the  origin,  basis,  limits,  conditions,  and  ends  of  authority. 
The  types  may,  after  Aristotle,  be  distinguished  into  three, 
each  capable  of  existing  in  two  forms,  a legitimate  and  an 
illegitimate — the  monarchical,  the  aristocratic  or  oligarchical, 
and  the  constitutional  or  democratic.^  (i)  If  monarchical, 
the  monarchy  may  be  either  absolute  or  limited  ; if  absolute, 

‘ “ The  Church  and  the  Ministry,”  p,  86.  * “ Politics,”  iii.  7. 


538  MONARCHY,  OLIGARCHY,  AND  DEMOCRACY 

it  will  be  in  the  civil  sphere  an  autocracy,  but  in  the  ecclesias- 
tical a papacy,  while  its  attribute  in  the  realm  of  civil  law  will 
be  supremacy,  but  in  the  ecclesiastical,  as  the  realm  of  opinion, 
infallibility.  If  it  be  a limited  monarchy,  the  limitation  must 
come  either  from  the  law,  which  stands  above  the  king  and 
makes  him  a responsible  ruler,  or  from  a co-ordinate  authority 
which  stands  over  against  his  and  qualifies  it.  In  the  ecclesias- 
tical sphere  the  former  is  represented  by  the  Gallican  theory, 
the  latter  by  what  we  may  call  the  Frankish  and  the  older 
Teutonic  theories  or  customs,  which  governed  the  relations 
between  Church  and  State  before  the  days  of  Hildebrand  and 
the  Hohenstaufen.  (ii)  If  the  political  type  be  oligarchical, 
it  becomes  in  the  civil  system  an  aristocracy,  in  the  ecclesias- 
tical either  a hierocracy  or  an  episcopacy.  Its  distinctive 
note  is  that  it  must  be  self-perpetuating — the  means  of 
continuing  and  propagating  the  order  must  be  within  the 
order,  and  cannot  be  delegated  to  any  one  or  anything 
without.  This  is  secured  in  the  aristocratic  and  in  certain 
hierocratic  systems  by  a rigid  law  of  hereditary  inheritance, 
but  in  the  episcopal  by  an  equally  rigid  law  of  official  suc- 
cession, ordination  or  consecration  of  bishops  by  bishops  ; 
in  other  words,  accession  to  office  by  act  and  sanction  of 
those  who  already  hold  it.  Of  course,  each  of  these  systems 
has  a theory  of  origin  corresponding  to  its  own  peculiar  form 
and  needs.  In  the  civil  sphere,  where  the  law  of  hereditary 
inheritance  reigns,  the  theory  is,  either  supernatural,  an  ordi- 
nation of  God  through  His  Vicegerent,  as  with  Laud  and 
Filmer  ; or  natural,  due  to  the  superior  strength  or  cunning 
of  some  ancestor,  as  with  Hobbes  ; or  to  the  necessities  and 
will  either  of  the  State  or  of  certain  classes  within  it,  as  with 
Aristotle  ; or  to  some  imaginary  contract,  as  with  Rousseau. 
But  in  the  ecclesiastical  sphere,  the  theory  of  origin  must 
always  be  supernatural  ; either,  where  the  succession  is  heredi- 
tary, the  creation  or  election  by  God  of  some  special  family 
or  tribe,  as  with  the  Jews  and  the  Brahmans;  or,  where  the 


AS  METHODS  OF  CHURCH  GOVERNMENT. 


539 


law  uf  official  succession  reigns,  the  institution  by  the  Founder 
of  an  order  that  shall  transmit  authority  and  bestow  office 
as  in  Catholicism  and  Buddhism.  Levi  and  all  his  sons 
were  in  the  loins  of  Abraham  when  Melchisedec  met  him  ; 
all  the  succeeding  bishops  were  in  the  spirit  of  Paul  when  he 
ordained  Timothy  and  Titus,  (iii)  If,  again,  the  political  type 
be  democratic,  it  may  either  be  indirect  and  representative, 
where  the  authority  is  delegated  to  certain  persons,  either  of 
a special  order,  or  simply  as  citizens  of  good  repute  ; or  it  may 
be  direct  and  collective,  where  the  enfranchized,  or  simply  the 
citizens,  act  together  and  as  a whole.  The  former  has  its 
counterpart  in  the  civil  realm,  though  only  in  a very  partial 
degree,  in  ancient  Rome  ; in  a fuller  degree  in  our  modern 
republics  ; but  in  the  ecclesiastical  it  takes  shape  as  presbytery. 
The  latter  may  be  seen,  in  its  civil  form,  in  the  ancient  Greek 
cities  ; but  in  its  ecclesiastical,  in  the  Independent  or  Congre- 
gational Churches. 

But  one  thing  marks  all  these  political  types — they  are 
polities,  methods  and  forms  of  government,  of  immense  signifi- 
cance as  such,  but  as  no  more.  Taken  at  their  very  utmost 
valuation,  they  represent  the  framework  of  the  State,  but  do  not 
describe  its  essence  ; they  affect  and  condition,  but  do  not  con- 
stitute its  life.  A Greek  city  might  change  from  a tyranny 
to  an  oligarchy,  or  to  a democracy,  but  it  remained  Greek 
still.  Rome  did  not  cease  to  be  when  the  Republic  became 
the  Empire  ; France  has  tried  many  polities,  but  still  remains 
France.  The  State  is  the  people  ; the  polity  is  the  system 
under  which  they  are  organized,  and  which  may  be  changed 
without  any  change  of  the  people.  Salmasius  said,  “ It  is 
absurd  to  argue  that  kingdoms  were  before  kings,  for  it  is 
through  kings  that  kingdoms  are  ; did  no  king  reign  there 
could  be  no  kingdom.”  But  Milton  replied,  “ Kingdoms, 
indeed,  were  not  before  kings,  but  peoples  were,  and  it  is  for 
and  through  peoples  that  both  kings  and  kingdoms  exist.” 
And  it  is  in  the  ecclesiastical  as  in  the  civil  realm  ; it  is 


540 


APOSTOLIC  DESCENT  OF  THE  CHURCH 


neither  the  bishops  nor  the  clergy  that  constitute  the  Church, 
but  the  Church  that  constitutes  the  clergy.  The  Church 
was  before  they  were ; they  are  by  it,  and  through  it,  and 
for  it  ; they  owe  their  being  and  succession  to  it ; it  does  not 
depend  for  its  unity  upon  them,  but  upon  its  Head  and  its 
relation  to  Him.  The  people  are  His  ; without  His  people 
no  polity  can  be.  With  His  people,  some  polity  must  be  ; but 
of  what  sort  it  shall  be  it  is  for  His  people,  not  for  any  special 
order,  to  determine. 

The  cardinal  vice,  then,  of  this  kind  of  speculation  is  that  it 
makes  the  secondary  element  primary,  the  primary  secondary, 
and  by  inverting  the  relations  perverts  the  force  and  ihe  func- 
tions of  both  elements.  It  turns  a mere  ecclesiastical  polity, 
which  is  not  primitive  and  is  without  connection  or  affinity  with 
Christ’s  ideal  of  the  kingdom,  into  a substantive  doctrine  of  the 
Church.  It  makes  this  polity,  instead  of  the  people,  the  con- 
stituent factor  or  authority.  It  affirms  the  Apostolic  descent 
of  the  clergy,  but  forgets  the  Apostolic  descent  of  the  Church. 
It  argues  concerning  the  ministry  as  men  in  the  seventeenth 
century  used  to  argue  concerning  the  king  ; the  Divine  rights 
once  claimed  for  him  are  still  claimed  for  priests,  and  proved 
in  similar  methods  by  the  help  of  similar  assumptions.  And 
the  similarity  is  not  only  with  Filmer’s  Divine  right  of  the 
patriarchal  king.  The  theory  represents  too  deep  a tendency 
in  human  nature  to  be  without  analogies,  as  every  student  of 
comparative  religion  knows  only  too  well,  in  wider  and  more 
distant  fields.  But  one  thing  is  clear : no  theory  of  either 
the  Church  or  its  polity  can  be  adequate  which  forgets  the 
collective  Christian  people,  through  whom  and  for  whom  all 
polities  are.  The  best  polity  for  a State  is  the  polity  that  secures 
the  greatest  possible  good  to  the  whole,  doing  completest  justice 
alike  to  the  obscurest  citizen  and  the  most  illustrious  ; but  the 
polity  that  shuts  outside  the  Church  as  immense  a body  of 
holy  men  as  are  to  be  found  within  it,  is  a polity  that  does  no 
justice  to  the  ways  of  God  or  the  actual  condition  of  man.  It 


SECURES  APOSTOLIC  DESCENT  OF  CLERGY. 


541 


is  to  constitute  a state  by  disfranchizing  its  free-born  citizens, 
and  degrading  them  into  serfs  or  helots.  The  method  may 
be  logical,  but  it  is  one  of  as  violent  disregard  to  right  and 
fact  as  any  known  to  ancient  usurper  or  tyrant.  In  all 
questions  of  this  sort  there  are  two  points  of  view : Men 
may  reason  downwards  from  the  polity  to  the  people,  and  say, 
“ The  Maker  of  the  world,  the  Founder  of  the  society,  made 
this  polity  which  we  embody  and  administer,  and  you  cannot 
be  His  people  unless  you  live  under  His  polity  ; on  it,  and 
our  administration  of  it.  His  grace  so  depends  that  without  us 
and  our  instruments  it  will  not  be  communicated  to  you.” 
Or  men  may  reason  upwards  from  the  people  to  the  polity, 
and  say,  “ God  made  the  people  ; His  Spirit  renewed  them 
and  inhabits  them.  The  polity  must  express  and  represent  the 
Spirit  of  God  in  the  people  ; articulate,  organize,  and  direct 
their  energies.  They  are  first,  it  is  second  ; proceeds,  indeed, 
from  God,  but  comes  through  His  sons,  and  only  what  is  their 
creation  has  His  sanction.”  Of  these  two  points  of  view,  the 
former  may  be  termed  the  high  clerical,  the  latter  the  high 
Church.  What  begins  and  ends  with  the  ministry  may  exalt 
the  clergy  ; what  exalts  the  Church  miTst  never  lose  hold  of 
the  people,  the  saints  called  and  approved  of  God. 

§ II. — The  Church  Visible  and  Invisible. 

Enough  has  been  said  as  to  the  relation  between  polity  and 
Church,  but  its  theological  and  historical  significance  may  be 
illustrated  by  a phrase  which  it  is  the  custom  of  Catholic, 
especially  neo-Catholic,  writers  elaborately  to  despise  and  to 
misunderstand — “The  Invisible  Church.”  The  date  of  its  origin 
is  a small  matter.  New  conditions  so  combine  or  affect  old 
ideas  as  to  demand  new  names.  If  theology  used  no  terms, 
or  allowed  no  ideas  save  those  found  in  the  Fathers,  its  life 
would  soon  cease,  and  nowhere  sooner  than  in  neo-Catholicism. 
One  thing  is  certain,  the  phrase  represents  elements  and  ideas 
the  Reformers  owed  to  Augustine.  His  doctrine  of  the 


542 


AUGUSTINE’S  CONDITIONAL  CHURCH 


Church  was  confronted  with  two  great  difficulties,  one  real 
or  social,  the  other  ideal  or  theological,  (a)  The  real  was 
the  presence  within  it  of  the  unworthy,  the  impure,  or  the 
hypocritical — men  who  did  not  belong  to  the  Society  of  the 
Saved,  especially  as  it  existed  for  the  mind  and  by  the  will  of 
its  Founder.  Hence  he  had  to  distinguish  between  the  ideal 
and  the  actual  or  the  real  and  the  counterfeit  Church.^  The 
Reformers  had  to  face  this  contradiction  in  a far  more  aggra- 
vated form,  and  they  said,  “ Since  these  impure,  hypocritical 
men,  though  they  are  visibly  within  are  really  without  the 
Church,  let  us  cease  to  use  false  words,  and  say — Of  the 
Church  as  God  knows  it,  they  are  no  members.  Our  actual 
is  not  identical  with  God’s  ideal ; and  here  the  ideal  of  God 
is  the  alone  real.”  But  {(S)  the  theological  difficulty  was 
more  serious  : Augustine’s  Church,  as  sacerdotal,  was  condi- 
tional— by  acts  and  sacraments  men  could  be  incorporated 
into  it  ; but  his  theology  was  unconditional — grace  was 
absolute,  and  men  were  saved  not  simply  by  being  within  the 
Church  but  by  the  decree  or  will  of  God.^  If  the  decree  is 

^ “ De  Doctr.  Christ.,”  iii.  32 : “ Non  enim  revera  Domini  corpus  est,  quod 
cum  illo  non  erit  in  aeternum.  Sed  dicendum  fuit,  De  Domini  corpora  vero 
atque  permixto,  aut,  vero  atque  simiilato,  vel  quid  aliud ; quia  non  solum 
in  aeternum,  verum  etiam  nunc  hypocritae  non  cum  illo  esse  dicendi  sunt, 
quamvis  in  ejus  esse  videantur  Ecclesia.  Unde  poterat  ista  regula  et  sic 
appellari,  ut  diceretur  de  permixta  (instead  of  bipartita)  Ecclesia.”  Cf. 
“ Unit.  Eccl.,”  c.  XXV.,  § 74:  " Multi  tales  sunt  in  sacramentorum  communione 
cum  ecclesia,  et  tamen  jam  non  sunt  in  ecclesia.”  “ Cont.  Litt.  Petit,”  ii.  10 : 
“ Dico  ad  semen  Abrahae,  quod  est  in  omnibus  gentibus,  non  pertinere,  si 
quid  non  recte  vobis  factum  est,  fortasse  a palea  dominicae  segetis,  quae 
nihilominus  est  in  omnibus  gentibus.”  This  division  was  so  sharp  in 
Augustine,  that  he,  like  the  Reformers,  was  charged  with  believing  in  the 
existence  of  duas  Ecclesias  “ Brevic.  Coll,  cum  Donat.,”  iii,  10).  The 
criticism  was  just  as  valid  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  and  no  more  ! 
Cf.  Seeberg,  ‘‘Studien  zur  Geschichte  des  Begriffes  der  Kirche,”  § 7; 
A.  Dorner,  “ Augustinus,”  pp.  276-295. 

^ Cf.  with  above,  Augus.,  “In  Joh.  Evang.,”  xlv.  12:  “Secundum  istani 
ergo  praescientiam  Dei  et  praedestinationem,  quam  multae  oves  foris,  quam 
multi  lupi  intus  ; et  quam  multae  oves  intus,  et  quam  multi  lupi  foris  ! ” So 
“de  Bapt.,”  V.  xxvii.  38  : “Namque  in  ilia  ineffabili  praescientia  Dei,  multi 
qui  foris  videntur,  intus  sunt,  et  multi  qui  intus  videntur,  foris  sunt.” 


AND  HIS  UNCONDITIONAL  THEOLOGY. 


543 


absolute  in  a man’s  theology,  he  cannot  consistently  allow 
his  ecclesiology  to  make  salvation  conditional ; yet  a con- 
ditional salvation  is  of  the  very  essence  of  a Church  that 
saves  or  communicates  grace  by  the  sacraments.^  Hence 
Augustine  might  have  argued  that  men  were  predestinated 
to  baptism,  but  he  could  not  consistently  argue  that  men 
through  baptism  were  regenerated.  And  as  in  face  of  the 
facts  he  could  not  maintain,  as  his  one  doctrine  required, 
that  there  were  only  the  elect  within  the  Church  and  only 
the  reprobate  without,  and  as  in  obedience  to  the  other,  he 
had  not  only  to  admit,  but  to  contend  that  there  were 
elect  as  well  as  reprobates  without,  and  reprobates  as  well  as 
elect  within, — he  had  to  content  himself  with  affirming  both 
positions,  leaving  them  confronting  each  other  as  dexterously 
concealed,  yet  unreconciled  antitheses,  or  rather  as  radical 
contradictions.  In  the  last  analysis,  indeed,  “ Numerus 
certus  sanctorum  prsedestinatus,”  or  the  elect,  were  the  real 
members  of  the  Church  ; while  the  non-elect,  though  in 
its  communion,  were  but  semblances,  weeds  in  the  garden 
of  God. 

Now,  what  the  Reformed  theologians  did  was  simply  to 
develop  Augustine’s  position  into  logical  consistency  by  con- 
ceiving the  Church  through  its  ultimate  constitutive  factor, 
the  will  of  God.  So  construed,  it  became  the  society  of  the 
elect,  or  company  of  the  predestinated,  or,  simply,  the  Church 
invisible,  while  the  visible  was  the  mixed  body  who  lived  in 
outward  profession.  But  this  only  showed  that  the  inheritance 
of  Augustine  was  divided  ; the  Catholics  succeeded  to  his 
polity,  the  Reformers  to  his  theology.  The  anti-Donatist  was 
the  Father  of  the  visible  Church,  but  the  anti-Pelagian  the 
Father  of  the  invisible.^ 

But  this  leaves  us  with  the  question.  What  did  the 
Reformers  mean  by  the  phrase  “Invisible  Church”?  We 
can  easily  see  what  they  did  not  mean.  They  did  not  intend 

> Supra,  pp.  116-119.  * Supra,  p.  155. 


544 


THE  INVISIBLE  CHURCH  AFFIRMED 


to  reduce,  but  rather  to  enhance  the  reality,  necessity,  and 
importance  of  the  visible  Church,^  within  which  the  invisible 
lived  and  without  which  it  could  not  be.^  Nor  did  they 
mean  to  deny  the  unity  and  continuity  of  the  Church  ; but 
rather  to  affirm  both,  though  in  a form  that  aimed  at  being 
just  to  air  the  facts,  and  the  whole  truth  as  to  the  redeeming 
activity  of  God.^  Nor  did  they  use  the  phrases,  as  Bellarmine 
with  the  skilful  misunderstanding  of  controversial  genius 
maintained,  to  denote  two  Churches,  but  rather  to  express 
two  ideas  that  were  related  as  the  body  and  soul  of  man.^ 
The  “ Invisible  Church”  was  no  “ Civitas  Platonica,”  nor  was 
the  visible  an  organized  accident,  or  series  of  expediences. 
Each  was  necessary  to  the  other,  and  both  to  the  complete 
expression  of  so  rich  and  complex  an  idea  as  the  Church  of 
Christ.  In  the  first  place,  that  could  not  be  an  “ ecclesia 
sensibilis,”  for  did  not  the  Creed  say,  “ I believe  in  the  Holy 

^ Of  it  John  Calvin  said  : “ Veriim  quia  nunc  de  visibili  ecclesia  disserere 
propositum  est,  discamus  vel  uno  matris  elogio  quam  utilis  sit  nobis  ejus 
cognitio,  imo  necessaria ; quando  non  alius  est  in  vitam  ingressus  nisi  nos 
ipsa  concipiat  in  utero,  nisi  pariat,  nisi  nos  alat  suis  uberibus,  denique  sub 
custodia  et  gubernatione  sua  nos  tueatur,  donee  exuti  came  mortali  similes 
erimus  angelis”  (“Inst.  Rel.  Christ,”  iv.  I,  4.  Cf.  Catechis.  Major,  ii. 
3»  42). 

2 Melanchthon,  “ Loci  Communes,”  i.,  p.  283  (Detzets  ed.)  says : “ Quo- 
tiescunque  de  ecclesia  cogitamus,  intueamur  coetum  vocatorum,  qui  est 
ecclesia  visibilis,  nec  alibi  electos  ullos  esse  somniemus,  nisi  in  hoc  ipso 
coetu  visibili ; nam  neque  invocari,  neque  agnosci  Dens  aliter  vult,  quam 
ut  se  patefecit ; nec  alibi  se  patefecit,  nisi  in  ecclesia  visibili,  in  qua  sola 
sonat  vox  evangelii,  nec  aliam  fingamus  ecclesiam  invisibilem  et  mutam 
hominum  in  hac  vita  tamen  viventium.”  Hence  the  formula:  “Ecclesia 
invisibilis  non  extra  visibilem  est  quaerenda,  sed  ilia  huic  est  inclusa.” 

^ “Apol.  Confes.  Angus.,”  art.  iv.,  p.  146. 

^ The  terms  denoted  distinction,  but  no  division  ; and  so  Hollazius, 
p.  1283:  “Non  asserimus  ecclesiam  visibilem  et  invisibilem  esse  duas 
ecclesias  specie  diversas,  aut  contrarie  oppositas ; sed  unam  eandemque 
ecclesiam  diverse  respectu  dicimus  visibilem  et  invisibilem,  visibilem 
respectu  vocatorum,  invisibilem  respectu  renatorum  ” ; and  he  explains 
“ coetus  invisibilis  renatorum  sub  visibili  coetu  vocatorum  continetur.” 
Cf.  Luther,  Werke,  xviii.,  pp.  12-15  Walch);  Gerhard,  “Loci,”  xi. 
81,  82  ; and  “ Confes.  Cath.,”  p.  207  (ed.  1679). 


MADE  THE  VISIBLE  CHURCH  REAL. 


545 


Catholic  Church  ” ? But  the  things  of  faith  are  invisible  ; 
God  who  loves,  Christ  who  saves,  the  Spirit  which  renews  the 
soul,  are  unseen  ; unseen,  too,  is  the  soul  they  love  and  save 
and  renew,  and  unseen  the  society  constituted  of  God  out  of 
this  and  all  the  other  souls  He  has  saved.  In  the  next  place, 
the  body  that  claims  to  be  the  one  Holy  Catholic  Apostolic 
Church  does  not  possess  any  one  of  the  attributes  it  so  proudly 
boasts  ; it  is  not  one,  for  it  is  divided  into  many  sects,  and  has 
been  the  fruitful  mother  of  divisions  ; it  is  not  holy,  for  within 
and  over  it  are  many  evil  men  ; and  to  its  working  evil  forces 
have  contributed  almost  as  powerfully  as  good ; it  is  not  Catholic, 
for  it  is  Roman  ; nor  is  it  Apostolic,  for  it  has  exchanged  the 
ministry  of  service  for  the  functions  of  empire.  Over  against 
and  within  this  political  and  juridical  body  stands  the  Society 
of  the  Saints  of  God,  enjoying  a communion,  which,  though 
informal  or  unconscious,  is  real  in  proportion  as  it  is  rooted 
in  the  Divine.  Again,  the  saving  of  man  is  an  act  and  work 
of  grace  ; all  its  terms  are  spiritual  and  free  ; its  very  nature 
would  be  changed  were  it  bound  to  institutions  of  man’s 
making  and  ordering.  Justification  by  an  institution  is  the 
very  negation  of  justification  by  faith  ; the  more  it  is  mag- 
nified the  more  is  the  sole  ability  to  justify  of  the  spiritual 
Person  who  impersonates  the  saving  energies  of  God  limited  and 
lowered  ; and  the  more  is  His  claim  to  achieve  through  faith 
the  saving  change  in  man  qualified  and  conditioned.  Then,  as 
it  is  persons  God  saves,  it  is  a people  He  constitutes  ; and  as 
He  loves  them,  and  they  love  Him,  they  must  be  able  to 
enjoy  His  fellowship  in  spite  of  anything  any  political  society 
on  earth  has  done  or  can  do.  Under  this  aspect,  there  is  a 
double  idea  to  express — the  idea  that  all  who  love  God  form 
a society  with  and  before  and  under  the  God  they  love,  and 
the  idea  that  this  society,  as  bound  to  no  terms  of  man’s 
making,  is  realized  in  the  realm  of  the  transcendental  and 
eternal.  Now,  what  term  can  better  express  this  double  idea 
than  “ Invisible  Church  ” ? It  lifts  us  at  once  into  the  region 

35 


546 


THE  VISIBLE  CHURCH  CATHOLIC. 


where  all  the  realities  are  transcendental  and  all  are  spiritual, 
where  God  is  all  in  all  to  man,  and  man  lives  in  conscious 
fellowship  with  God  and  loving  obedience  to  Him. 


§ III.— The  Church  of  God— Holy,  Catholic,  and 
Apostolic. 

We  have  been  concerned,  not  with  the  truth  or  falsity  of 
the  idea  of  the  invisible  Church,  simply  with  the  meaning  and 
import  of  the  phrase  ; but  this  much  may  be  said  : it  has 
more  of  the  historical  and  Catholic  spirit  than  the  phrase 
in  whose  interest  it  has  been  so  loudly  despised.  It  was  an 
attempt  to  find  an  idea  of  the  Church  as  large  and  deep 
as  the  activity  of  God,  yet  as  varied  and  free  as  the  spirit 
of  man.  It  endeavoured  to  rescue  the  people  of  God  from 
bondage  to  a juridical  letter,  and  restore  them  to  their 
rightful  place  in  His  spiritual  order.  There  was  nothing 
Luther  more  loved  to  say  and  to  emphasize  than  this — 
Church  meant  people,,  saintly,  Catholic,  Christian,  daily  being 
sanctified  and  made  into  a holy  Christendom.  And  in  so 
speaking  he  agreed  with  the  Catholicity  of  the  Early  Ages. 
As  Justin  counted  all  truth  to  be  of  Christ,  as  Clement 
found  prophecy  in  Hellenic  philosophy  as  well  as  in  the 
Hebrew  Law,  as  Augustine  believed  that  there  had  been 
a Christianity  before  Christ,  so  Luther  held,  translating  the 
Patristjc  abstract  into  his  own  brave  concrete,  that  wherever 
the  holy  soul  is,  whether  under  the  Papacy  or  amid  the 
Turks,  there  is  the  Church.  And  simply  because  so  trans- 
cendental and  Divine,  it  must  have  a phenomenal  form. 
The  finite  persons  who  compose  it  are  men  ; its  Founder 
was  an  historical  Person,  and  defined  the  elements  necessary 
to  the  visible  being  of  His  society.  These  are  two,  the 
Word  and  the  Sacraments,  or  the  Gospel  by  which  men 
are  saved,  and  the  symbols  which  at  once  express  their 
relation  to  a common  Head  and  bind  them  into  a common 


GOD  AND  THE  CHURCH  AGREE. 


547 


Brotherhood.  Where  these  are  there  is  a Church ; more 
than  these  need  not  be.  Forms  of  polity  are  matters  to 
be  determined  by  saved  people,  not  by  consecrated  priests. 
The  people  are  primary,  the  polity  is  secondary,  and  the 
polity  which  best  articulates  the  religion  for  the  people  and 
best  organizes  the  people  for  the  purposes  of  the  religion,  is 
for  the  time  and  place  the  best  polity.  Particular  Churches 
with  their  specific  polities  do  not  break  the  unity  of  the 
Catholic  Church  visible,  while  their  faith  and  love  constitute 
the  unity  of  the  invisible.  It  is  only  where  accidents  are 
made  of  the  essence  of  the  Church  that  schisms  are  created, 
for  schism  is  but  an  ordinance  of  man  turned  into  an  im- 
perative law  of  God,  and  as  such  forced  upon  His  free 
people.  The  phrase  “ visible  and  invisible  Church  ” may 
be  open  to  manifold  criticisms,  for  the  idea  was  large,  and 
human  speech  is  limited,  and  the  ability  to  read  the  mind 
within  it  more  limited  still  ; but  surely  we  may  say  that  in 
all  the  elements  of  sublimity  and  Catholicity,  official  Catho- 
licism, especially  in  its  more  sectional  and  schismatic  forms,  is 
alongside  this  belief  of  “ the  new  sectaries  of  the  sixteenth 
century”  only  as  “moonlight  unto  sunlight,  and  as  water  unto 
wine.” 

We  return  then,  as  we  close,  to  our  determinative  principle  : 
the  ideal  of  the  Church  and  the  idea  of  God  must  agree. 
What  does  not  exalt  His  infinite  Majesty  and  Fatherhood 
is  but  colossal  individualism,  though  it  may  disguise  itself 
as  Catholicism.  God’s  grace  is  too  rich  to  be  confined  to 
any  one  channel,  too  boundless  to  be  bound  to  councils  or 
coteries  or  orders  of  men,  infirm  and  fallible  like  all  their 
kind.  It  were  to  affirm  no  paradox,  but  rather  a position 
capable  of  the  clearest  historical  proof,  were  we  to  maintain 
that  the  higher  the  theory  of  the  Church  the  meaner  the 
conception  of  God,  or  that  the  growth  of  high  Church  doc- 
trine is  always  coincident  with  the  decay  of  the  highest 
theistic  belief.  For  an  absolute  or  infallible  Church  means 


548 


CHRIST’S  CHURCH  IS  CHRISTLIKE. 


a limited  God,  a God  whose  working  men  condition,  whose 
mercies  they  circumscribe,  whose  grace  they  regulate  and 
distribute.  Their  limitations  are  imposed  on  Him  ; His 
attributes  are  not  transmuted  into  their  energies.  They  but 
repeat  on  a larger  scale  the  sin  of  Israel, — God  belongs  to 
their  Church  rather  than  their  Church  to  God  ; He  is  accom- 
modated to  its  claims  rather  than  its  claims  humbled  only  to 
be  the  more  exalted  in  the  presence  of  His  majesty.  For  the 
more  worthily  Churches  think  of  God,  the  more  will  they  feel 
the  fallibility  of  all  their  popes  and  pastors  ; the  more  they  are 
possessed  with  the  faith  of  His  sufficiency,  the  less  will  they 
build  on  the  idea  of  their  own  ; the  more  infinitely  good  and 
gracious  He  seems,  the  less  will  they  be  able  to  claim  to  be 
His  sole  and  adequate  representatives.  The  virtue  of  a Church 
does  not  differ  from  the  virtue  of  a man  : all  are  but  earthen 
vessels,  even  though  they  be  vessels  that  bear  the  treasure  of 
the  Lord.  The  vessel  magnified  is  the  treasure  depreciated  ; 
the  more  the  vehicle  boasts  its  own  rare  workmanship,  the  less 
it  glorifies  the  wealth  it  was  made  to  bear. 

From  the  strife  of  the  sects  we  would  return  into  the  calm 
and  gracious  presence  of  Him  who  is  at  once  the  Head  and 
the  Heart  of  His  Church.  He  has  given  us  His  peace,  and 
it  abides  with  us  even  amid  the  collisions  and  contradictions 
of  men.  These  are  but  of  time,  while  He  is  of  eternity.  And 
in  His  presence  we  may  not  meet  negation  with  negation,  and 
affirm  of  those  who  say  that  there  is  no  Church  but  theirs,  that 
theirs  is  no  Church  of  Christ ; on  the  contrary,  we  shall  draw 
no  narrower  limits  than  those  traced  by  the  hand  of  the  Son 
of  man  : “Whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of  My  Father  which 
is  in  heaven,  the  same  is  My  brother,  and  sister,  and  mother.”^ 


* Matt.  xii.  50, 


INDEX. 


Abelard,  on  reason  and  faith,  i2of. 

Adam  and  Christ,  the  Pauline  antithesis,  31 1 ff.,  529;  expresses  a philosophy 
of  history,  314,  461  f. 

Agnosticism  in  English  philosophy,  203  f. ; assumes  a double  incompetence, 

387. 

Alexandria,  influence  of  its  thought  in  Epistle  to  Hebrews,  321 ; tendencies 
in,  39,  60;  the  catechetical  school  of,  75. 

Anglican  school  in  theology,  the,  9f.,  14,  155,  176 ff.;  compared  with  the 
Puritan,  i8i  ff.,  188  n.;  its  doctrine  of  the  Church,  176  ff.,  536  ff.;  its 
Arminianism,  183  f.;  its  patristic  tendency,  10,  184;  on  the  Incarnation, 
451  ; in  relation  to  Newman,  27;  its  revival,  10,  191  f. 

Anselm,  the  scholastic  theologian,  118-126;  his  problems,  ii9ff. ; of 
Northern  descent,  113.  Cf.  210  n. 

Anthropology,  characteristic  of  the  Latin  Church,  70,  74,  108  ; the  Pauline, 
310  ff. ; in  relation  to  Christ’s  own  doctrine,  376. 

Apocalypse,  the,  its  value  to-day,  19 ; its  Christology,  302,  332. 

Apologists,  the,  and  Christian  theology,  66,  82. 

Apostolic  succession,  531  f.,  540. 

Aquinas,  an  Aristotelian  Realist,  124;  of  Northern  descent,  113. 

Aristotle,  his  influence  in  the  Middle  Ages,  40,  119,  124;  his  types  of 
political  theory  applied  to  the  Church,  537  f. 

Arius,  his  theology,  84 ; declines  to-use  homoousios^  88. 

Arminianism,  a criticism  of  Calvinism,  i69f.,  431 ; in  the  Anglican  Church, 
184. 

Athanasius,  his  theology,  84,  222,  3900.,  490. 

Augustine,  his  anthropology,  109;  his  dualism,  Ii5f.,  542  f.  ; his  con- 
ditionalism  in  polity,  116,  155,  542  ; his  absolutism  in  theology,  ii6f., 
I55»  I57>  162,  542;  his  interpretation  of  Paul,  188;  his  influence  on 
Scholasticism,  iisff.,  and  at  the  Reformation,  146,  153 ff.,  541  ff. 


Baur,  F.  C.,  his  relation  to  Strauss,  259,  264;  founder  of  Tubingen  school, 
259;  history  of  his  mind,  260  ff  ; the  historian  of  dogma,  263;  his 
Christology,  264  f. ; his  problem,  265  ; his  antitheses,  267  f.,  272  ; his 
tendency  theory,  270  ff. 


550 


INDEX. 


Biblical  exegesis  of  sixty  years  ago,  I2f, 

„ theology  of  to-day,  292  ; in  Herder,  200  f, 

Bossuet  on  development,  31  f. 

Broad  Church,  the,  compared  with  the  High  Church,  176  ff.;  its  leaders, 
178. 

Butler,  his  works,  ii;  his  doctrine  ol  conscience  in  Newman,  25;  on 
revelation,  386  n. 


Calvin,  143-151;  his  doctrine  of  God,  145,  i64f.,  430;  in  relation  to 
Augustine,  155,  162;  on  development,  27. 

Calvinism,  a doctrine  of  God,  149,  1 56,  162  f.,  430  f. ; its  affinity  to  Pantheism, 
i64ff. ; its  schools,  163,  168,  173:  see  Reformed. 

Candlish  on  the  sovereignty  of  God,  432  ff.,  445. 

Catholicism,  early,  27,  62,  107  f,,  527 ; its  rise  explained  by  Baur,  269,  272 ; 
mediaeval,  45,  127;  later,  27,  149,  155;  its  conception  of  God,  429; 
and  of  the  Church,  155,  536,  547. 

Chemnitz  on  development,  28  n.  ^ 

Christ,  use  of  the  name  in  New  Testament,  306,  336,  337,  358  f.  ; the 
Christology  of,  358-377;  the  ecclesiology  of,  515  ff.;  the  monotheism 
of,  378  ff.,  514;  the  filial  consciousness  of,  48,  360  ff.,  390  ff.,  440  ff.; 
histories  of,  17  f.,  235,  248,  278  ff.  ; the  verdict  of  history  on,  378  ff.; 
the  recovery  of  the  historical,  4,  6,  19  f.,  189,  277,  294.  See  Jesus, 
Messiah,  Son. 

Christology  of  the  New  Testament,  302-383  ; of  the  Ante-Nicene  age,  80  ff. ; 
of  Augustine,  118;  of  Lutheranism,  161  f.,  186,  257  f.;  of  Schleiermacher, 
228 ; in  Germany  subsequent  to  Strauss,  257  ; see  under  the  Godhead, 
385-400  ; and  under  Soteriology,  470-486  ; and  under  Incarnation. 

Church,  the,  doctrine  of,  513-548;  in  relation  to  theology,  I53ff.,  450; 
in  relation  to  the  Scriptures,  450,  499 f.,  500 ff;  development  in, 
38  ff. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  67,  75,  103. 

Communicatio  idiomatum^  in  Lutheran  Christology,  161  f.,  186,  257 ; 
between  God  and  the  Godhead,  427  ; in  the  Incarnation,  479. 

Creation,  doctrine  of,  its  philosophical  difficulties,  406 ; made  intelligible 
through  doctrine  of  Godhead,  410  ff.,  413,  417,  421,  446. 

Criticism,  historical,  191-297  ; in  relation  to  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures, 
500  ff. 

Cyprian,  as  an  administrator,  77  ; his  sacerdotalism,  104  f.,  106  n. 


Daill6  on  development,  28  n. 

Deism,  defined,  414,  416,  431;  Judaic,  383;  English,  204;  German,  193, 
224 ; its  historical  criticism,  192,  239. 

Development,  the  law  of,  in  theology  and  the  Church,  25-190;  definition 
of,  34  ; history  of  the  doctrine  in  theology,  27  ff. 

Duns  Scotus,  a Platonic  Realist,  124. 


INDEX, 


551 


Eastern  Church,  the,  its  characteristics,  72  f.,  185. 

“ Ecce  Homo,”  279  f. 

English  Church,  the,  and  theology,  176  ff.  See  Anglican,  Evangelical, 
Puritan. 

Episcopacy,  102  ff., 

Erasmus,  and  the  Renaissance,  131  ff. 

Evangelical  school,  the,  9f.,  14E,  176;  its  genesis,  175;  contrasted  with 
the  Puritan,  I79f* 


Fatherhood  of  God,  the,  in  the  consciousness  of  Christ,  48,  360  ff.,  390  ff., 
440  ff,;  in  Paul,  309;  in  John,  34of. ; in  Greek  theology,  91,  389; 
correlative  with  the  Sonship  of  Christ,  392ff,  473ff;  of  the  essence 
of  God,  398,  410;  determinative  of  sovereignty,  434 ff.,  444,  449;  in 
relation  to  sin,  449-469,  483  ff.  ; the  material  principle  in  theology,  451. 
See  Son  and  Sonship. 

Fathers,  the  Greek,  74 ff.;  on  the  Holy  Spirit,  490;  the  Antignostic,  82 f., 
187  ; the  Latin,  74  ff. 

Fichte,  207  ff. 


Geneva,  its  influence  at  the  Reformation,  i5of. 

Gnostics,  the,  the  first  theologians,  82;  their  terminology,  86  ff. 

God,  the  doctrine  of,  compared  with  that  of  the  Godhead,  385  ff.,  401, 
426  f. ; inherited  from  Judaism,  64  ff.,  388,  428 ; in  Greek  theology,  90  ff., 
389;  in  Latin  theology,  96  ff.,  389,  429;  in  Calvinism,  145,  149,  156, 
163,  430- 

God,  conception  of,  in  Theism,  401 ; in  Hebraism,  404 ; in  Greek  philosophy, 
405. 

Godhead,  the,  385-447;  its  significance  for  the  doctrine  of  God,  385,  401, 
403,  417,  421  ff.,  427,  440;  in  relation  to  the  Incarnation,  471 ; in  Greek 
theology,  91,  389,  394;  in  the  Hegelian  philosophy,  218  ff.;  as  revealed 
in  history,  261. 

Goethe,  196  ff,;  his  conception  of  Christ,  197  f.,  295. 

Gore,  his  theory  of  the  Church,  45  n.,  536  f. 

Gospels,  the,  criticism  of,  19,  230 ff.;  by  Herder,  202;  omitted  by  Strauss, 
235,  266,  271;  in  the  Tubingen  school,  258,  266,  270!.;  after- the 
death  of  Baur,  278 ; the  Christology  of,  334  ff. 

Greek  Philosophy,  a factor  in  development  of  theology,  59,  62  ff.,  70,  81, 
89 ff.;  in  the  ancient  Eastern  Church,  81  ff.,  185;  its  conception  of 
God,  405  ; affinities  with  the  Christian  Trinity,  396. 

Greek  Theology,  78  ff.,  90  ff.,  110;  the  Godhead  in,  91,  389,  394;  its 
Christology,  80  ff. 


Hebrew  religion,  a factor  in  development  of  theology,  64!.  See  Judaism. 
Hebrews,  Epistle  to,  its  Christology,  302,  320  ff.,  345  ; its  ecclesiology,  530. 
its  symbolism,  321,  326  f.,  343,  345  ; in  relation  to  the  canon,  506. 


552 


INDEX. 


Hegel,  213-223;  his  importance  for  modern  theology,  214,  221  f. ; his 
influence  on  Strauss,  214,  216,  222  f.,  233,  236!.;  and  on  Baur,  261. 

Hegelianism  and  Christian  Dogmatics,  222 ; and  Christology,  258 ; and 
criticism,  215,  236  ff. 

Hengstenberg  criticizes  Strauss,  244!. 

Henotheism,  descriptive  of  Judaism,  379,  515. 

Herder, 

High  Church,  the,  I76ff.  See  Anglicanism. 

Humanism,  at  the  Renaissance,  128 ff.;  its  influence  on  the  Reformation, 
137  f-.  503- 

Incarnation,  the,  as  conceived  by  Paul,  319;  by  John,  342;  by  the 
Evangelists,  354;  in  the  Lutheran  Church,  161  f.,  257 f.,  450 f.;  in  the 
Anglican,  184,  451;  doctrine  of,  470-479;  continued  in  the  Church, 
529;  as  held  in  German  philosophy,  by  Kant,  206;  by  Fichte,  208;  by 
Schelling,  21 1 ff. ; by  Hegel,  22off;  by  Strauss,  238  f.,  250;  by  Baur,  264f. 

Inspiration,  the  doctrine  of,  496  ff. 

Invisible  Church,  the,  541  ff. 

Irenaeus,  his  Biblical  theology,  67,  83 ; in  relation  to  sacerdotalism,  103. 

Jacobi,  206 f. 

James,  Epistle  of,  its  Christology,  302,  328,  373. 

Jesus,  use  of  the  name  in  Paul,  306 ; in  Hebrews,  323,  325  ; in  Peter,  331  ; 
in  Apocalypse,  332  ; Jesus  in  John,  344  ff.  See  Christ. 

John,  Gospel  of,  compared  with  the  synoptics,  338  f. ; its  characteristics, 
340,  345  ; the  Christology  of,  341  ff.,  346  ff.,  354  ; as  viewed  by  Strauss, 
248,  253  ; by  Baur,  269,  278 ; by  Ewald,  278. 

Judaism,  its  various  forms,  38;  in  relation  to  early  Christianity,  50 ff.;  to 
Paul,  304,  310,  320,  404;  to  Hebrews,  320;  in  the  Apocalypse,  332; 
its  conception  of  God,  377,  379,  393,  404,  428,  514;  of  the  Messiah, 
359  ; and  of  sin,  454. 

Jurieu  on  development,  30  n. 

Justin  Martyr,  his  relation  to  Greek  philosophy,  66,  85. 

Kant,  205  f.;  his  influence  on  Christology,  205,  473;  his  criticism  of 
Theism,  407. 

Keim’s  life  of  Jesus,  284  f. 

Kenosis,  in  the  Incarnation,  258,  355,  476 ; in  the  Godhead,  484. 

Kingdom  of  God,  or  of  Heaven,  founded  by  Christ,  48,  51,  355,  358,  375, 
515  ff.;  in  the  synoptics,  335,  337,  356;  in  relation  to  the  Church, 
515  ff.,  528  ff.  ; in  the  philosophy  of  Kant,  206  ; in  Hegelian  Dogmatics, 
222  ; in  modern  Biblical  theology,  292. 

Latin  theology,  74  ff.,  93  ff.,  186. 

Law,  Roman,  in  Latin  theologians.  71  f.,  98  f. ; in  the  doctrine  of  the  Atone- 
ment, 123,  480;  in  Evangelical  theology,  175  ; and  in  the  doctrine  of 
God,  429,  432  ff.,  436  ff. 


INDEX. 


553 


Lessing,  192  ff.  ; his  theory  of  revelation,  194  f.,  387. 

Lotze,  on  the  supreme  good,  41 1. 

Love,  essential  to  God,  410,  424,  440 ; and  righteousness  compared,  441  ff. ; 
motive  of  creation,  410  ff.,  417. 

Luke,  his  Christology,  337,  339,  346  ff,  355. 

Luther,  the  Reformer,  137  ff.  ; compared  with  Calvin,  143 ff;  on  the  Incar- 
nation, 477  f. ; his  doctrine  of  justification,  138,  140,  159,  450;  of  the 
Supper,  138,  i6i  ; of  the  Church,  140,  546;  of  the  Scriptures,  161. 

Lutheranism,  its  Church  theological,  155,  159  if.,  450 f.;  its  service  to 
Christology,  161  f.,  184,  257!. ; its  inconsistencies,  138,  142. 

Magdeburg  centuriators,  the,  on  development,  28  n.  K 

Maistre,  Joseph  de,  on  development,  32. 

Marheineke  applies  Hegelianism  to  theology,  222,  233. 

Mark,  his  Christology,  334  f,  339.  346ff.,  355- 

Martineau  on  revelation,  494  ff,  51 1. 

Material  and  formal  principle  in  theology,  449  ff 

Matthew,  his  Christology,  335  f.,  339,  346 ff,  355. 

Messiah,  or  Messianic  idea,  in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus,  358;  how 
affected  by  the  Temptation,  349  ff. ; in  the  Apostolic  Christologies, 
306,  310,  331,  332,  334 f.,  335,  373  f. 

Moehler  on  development,  32,  210  n.  \ 261  n.  ^ 

Monotheism,  of  the  Jews,  377,  393,  514;  really  created  and  preserved  by 
Christ,  378,  381,  514;  in  relation  to  the  Godhead,  393,  397;  in  relation 
to  polity  and  the  Church,  514,  547  ; in  the  philosophy  of  Baur,  261. 

Mythical  Theory,  the,  previous  to  Strauss,  241  ; as  held  by  Strauss,  240,  248, 
253.  255,  265  ; how  criticized,  246,  270. 

Neander,  233,  246. 

Neo-Platonism  and  Christianity,  39,  76,  109. 

Newman,  on  development,  25,  32  f.,  34,  36,  44;  his  fear  of  Liberalism,  178  ; 
his  search  for  authority,  26  ; on  Protestantism,  42 ; his  theology  how 
affected  by  English  philosophy,  204. 

Nicene  theology,  characterised,  90  ff.,  390  n. 

Nominalism,  124  ff. 

Occam,  William  of,  a Nominalist,  124  f. 

Origen,  his  theology,  83 ; on  sacerdotalism,  104. 

Pantheism,  in  Calvinism,  164  f.  ; in  Strauss,  244;  in  Hindu  religion,  395  ; 
defined,  415  ; its  apparent  reasonableness,  412. 

Papacy,  the,  107  f.,  112,  127,  130,  429. 

Patripassianism,  the  truth  in,  484. 

Paul,  his  Christology,  302-320 ; his  conception  of  the  sovereignty  of  God, 
404;  of  sin,  459  ; of  the  Church,  520  ff.,  529  ff.;  his  influence  on  the 
Antignostic  Fathers,  187;  on  Augustine,  187;  on  the  Reformers,  160, 
187  ; the  Tubingen  criticism  on,  266  ff. 


554 


INDEX. 


Paulinism,  according  to  the  Tubingen  school,  270,  272,  274. 

Penalty,  legal  and  remedial  distinguished,  437  f. ; and  the  Fatherhood,  467 ; 
and  sin,  482  ; and  Atonement,  486. 

Petavius  on  development,  29  f. 

Peter,  the  Christology  of  his  Epistles,  302,  330;  as  keeper  of  the  keys,  518. 

Philo,  importance  for  Christian  theology,  65,  68. 

Philosophy,  in  Scholasticism,  112;  in  England,  203;  in  Germany,  204  ff., 
209  f.,  214  tf.,  224;  and  historical  criticism,  203;  and  modern  theology, 
472  f.  See  Greek. 

Plato,  65  f.,  78,  396. 

Polity,  Roman,  a factor  in  development  of  theology,  60,  93  f.,  no,  187; 
and  the  Church,  529  f.,  531  ff.,  535  ff. 

Positivism,  461,  494. 

Priesthood,  official,  unknown  in  Apostolic  Church,  48  f.,  533;  origin  and 
action  within  the  religion,  loi  ff.,  and  under  Sacerdotalism. 

Protestantism  and  development,  27 ; and  Humanism,  137,  503 ; its  attitude 
to  Scripture,  158,  500  ff. 

Pseudo-Dionysius  and  Catholicism,  109. 

Psychology  in  the  new  Tubingen  school,  290. 

Puritanism  in  the  English  Church,  179  ff.,  i88n. 

Realism,  Platonic  and  Aristotelian,  124  f. 

Reformation,  the,  137  ff. 

Reformed  Church,  the,  theological,  155,  162, 184;  its  doctrine  of  God,  163; 
and  of  the  Church,  146,  541  ff. 

Religion,  Roman  and  popular,  a factor  of  change  in  Christianity,  61 ; action 
on  ideas  of  priesthood  and  worship,  100-106. 

Religions,  historical,  7 ; equivalents  in  them  to  conception  of  sin,  454 ; their 
revelations,  493  ; as  viewed  by  Lessing,  194  f.;  by  Schelling,  211;  by 
Hegel,  217  ; by  Schleiermacher,  225  ; by  Baur,  260  f. 

Renaissance,  the  classical,  4f.,  127  ff. 

Renan’s  “Vie  de  Jesus,”  278  f.,  280. 

Revelation,  the  doctrine  of,  493-512;  necessary  to  knowledge  of  the 
Godhead,  386  ff.,  398  ; in  the  theology  of  Lessing,  194  f.,  387. 

Roman  Imperialism  in  Catholicism,  107 f.,  iiif. 

„ Law  in  theology,  71  f.,  98  f.,  123,  480.  See  Law. 

„ Polity,  a factor  in  Christian  development,  60,  93  f.,  no,  187. 

Romanticism,  4f.,  199  ff. 

Rothe  on  love  and  creation,  411, 

Sabellianism,  222,  398. 

Sacerdotalism,  absent  from  Christ’s  idea  of  religion,  49,  517  ff.,  533 

from  primitive  Christianity,  loi  ff.,  521,  525,  527,  533  f.;  transcended 
in  the  Epistle  to  Hebrews,  326  f.,  375  ; the  growth  of  in  Christianity, 
io4ff. 

Schelling,  209  ff. ; his  doctrine  of  the  Absolute,  209  f.,  216. 

Schenkel’s  life  of  Christ,  284. 


INDEX. 


555 


Schiller,  195  f. 

Schleiermacher,  223  ff. ; his  influence  on  religious  thought,  223  f.,  260 ; his 
criticism  of  the  Gospels,  230  f.,  234;  his  dictum  on  Christ,  231  ; his  life 
of  Christ,  283  f. 

Scholasticism,  1 1 1 ff. 

Scotus  Erigena,  1 1 5 

Scriptures,  the,  as  the  formal  source  of  theology,  450,  512;  in  relation  to 
the  Church,  450,  499,  500,  505  ff.  ; and  to  criticism,  500  ff.;  the  recovery 
of  the,  131  ff. ; the  Lutheran  doctrine  on,  161. 

Sin,  the  Pauline  idea  of,  3iiff. ; distinguished  from  transgression  and 
offence,  312  n.  * ; defined,  452  ff.;  as  common,  459  ff.;  in  relation  to 
the  Fatherhood,  449-469 ; and  to  the  Atonement,  479-487. 

Socinianism,  169,  172  f. 

Son  of  God,  its  use  by  Christ,  359  ff. ; and  by  writers  in  the  New  Testament, 
307,  323,  334  f.,  340  ; its  relation  to  “ Son  of  Man,”  364  ff. 

Son  of  Man,  its  use  by  Christ,  361  ff.,  364 ; in  the  Old  Testament,  361  f.; 
ideas  connected  with  the  term,  375  f. 

Sonship  of  Christ,  the  Divine,  in  the  consciousness  of  Christ,  48,  360  f.,  365 
368 f.,  376,  390 ff.,  397,  440,  447,  451,  471  ff.;  in  the  New  Testament, 
307,  310,  323  ff.,  330,  332,  335  f.,  340  ff.;  the  condition  of  man’s,  328, 
390,  447,  529  ; in  relation  to  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  392  ff.,  406,  440, 
473  ff. ; as  defined  by  Candlish,  432. 

Sonship  of  men,  48,  328,  368  f.,  376,  390,  441,  445  ff.,  456;  in  the  Nicene 
and  post-Nicene  theology,  3900.  h;  as  defined  by  Candlish,  432. 

Soteriology,  of  Paul,  3ioff. ; of  Luke,  338  ; in  the  East  and  West,  74;  of 
Luther,  140 ; doctrine  of,  470-492. 

Source,  material  and  formal,  of  theology,  449  ff. 

Sovereignty  of  God,  in  Judaism,  404;  in  Greek  theology,  81;  in  Latin 
theology,  389;  in  Augustine,  117,  146,  155;  in  Calvin  and  Calvinism, 
145  f.,  149,  155  f.,  i63f.,  431;  in  Puritanism,  i8iff. ; according  to 
Candlish,  432  ff.,  445;  as  material  source  of  theology,  450;  and  sin, 
465  ff. ; analogues  in  earthly  sovereignty,  433  fif.,  437  f. ; determined  by 
the  Paternity,  434  ff,  444. 

Spirit,  the  Holy,  399,  487  ff. 

Stoicism,  ancient,  60,  71  f.,  85  f.,  95  f. ; in  Calvinism,  145  f.,  164. 

Strauss,  230-253;  his  “Leben  Jesu,”  235  ff  ; the  mythical  theory,  240,  255 
influenced  by  Hegel,  214,  216,  222 f.,  233,  236 f.;  his  new  “Life  of 
Jesus,”  280  ff  ; dissolves  religion  into  humanism,  283. 

Sub-Apostolic  age,  the,  53,  55  ff. 

Sublapsarian  theology,  168. 

Subterlapsarian,  173  f 

“ Supernatural  Religion,”  285, 

Supralapsarian  theology,  163  ff. 


Temptation  of  Christ,  the,  349  ff. 
Tendency  theory,  the,  270,  272,  274. 


556 


INDEX. 


Tertullian,  juristic  in  theology,  39,  67,  76,  83,  93,  95  fF. ; his  Stoicism,  96  ; 
on  sin,  466 ; his  sacerdotalism,  97,  104. 

Theism,  its  conception  of  God,  401;  its  philosophical  difficulties,  406  fF., 
412,  414;  its  relation  to  theology,  401  ff.,  423. 

Tholuck  criticizes  Strauss,  245. 

Tradition  in  the  early  Church,  54,  57  f. ; as  defined  at  Trent,  158;  in 
relation  to  the  Scriptures,  158,  499,  501  f. 

Trent,  the  Council  of,  156  ff. 

Trimurti,  the  Hindu,  395. 

Trinity,  the  Christian,  395  fF.,  491 ; in  Greek  theology,  91 ; ethnic  parallels 
to,  395  ff. ; as  held  by  Hegel,  218  ; by  Baur,  263  f.  See  Godhead. 

Tubingen  school,  254-276;  later  developments  of,  289  f.  See  Baur. 

Ullmann  criticizes  Strauss,  243,  246 ; on  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus,  279. 

Western  Church,  the,  characteristics  of,  72  f.;  its  thought  and  organisation, 
107. 

Word,  the,  in  the  Gospel  of  John,  340  fF.;  or  Logos  in  Greek  theolog}’^, 
82  f.,  85  ; in  Tertullian,  97  ; in  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  475. 


